Communications
Informed parents please Sutton High School has started sharing information such as pupils’ individual target grades more openly with their parents – to very good effect Sutton High School is part of the Girls’ Day School Trust and, like many other schools, we hold a good deal of information about our pupils’ achievement. As is also often the case in a high-performing school, we have traditionally kept parents informed of how their child is progressing through regular reporting and parents’ evenings. However, we sometimes found that the information we gave parents was confusing. Parents might know that their daughter was achieving to Level 5b in maths, for example, but they may have had little understanding of whether this was good progress or not so good, in terms of her capability. This could lead to some parents being surprised or even disappointed at exam time when their child’s results were not what they expected. This is something we wanted to change. The decision was made to overhaul the way pupil progress was being monitored at Sutton High. As part of this, we wanted to track the girls’ achievement more closely and share much more information with parents than had been the case in the past. This was a key
factor in our overall aim to ensure that every child was fully supported in achieving all they were truly capable of.
Pulling valuable information from data Like most schools, our staff have a wealth of information available to them about pupils’ attainment, including MidYIS or ALIS scores, assessment grades and exam results. This data is stored electronically in our management information system – we use the one supplied by SIMS Independent. In a major change to the way we had done things before, we began using this information to create what we call Target Minimum Levels for each girl – essentially, grades that we feel our pupils are capable of achieving, based on their previous attainment. We then introduced a simple traffic light system that flags green, amber or red to indicate whether or not a pupil is on track, almost on track or falling behind in the progress they are making towards these grades. We did this right across the curriculum. Continued overleaf
Spring 2016
*CCR Vol53 no1 Spring 2016.indd 13
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