The lead-up to results day for me is the way I imagine some people feel in the lead-up to Christmas or their birthday: a blend of excitement, dread and anxiety. But I’m not the only one waiting for the clock to tick over, I’m part of a much bigger team.
On the day before results day, my data manager will rise at 3am to download the results. The first step is to get all of those onto our platform, check they’re all there and press go. Then the analysis starts and it won’t be long before we have a full breakdown at each level: trust, school, department, cohort and student.
When I look at the data for the first time, I look at the big headline numbers. Are they where we think they should be? What’s the value added? And what’s the difference between what we said was going to happen and what did happen?
Just as with Christmas or birthdays, sometimes what you receive fulfils all of the expectations and anticipation and, sometimes, it’s far from what you expected.
We put a lot of emphasis on prediction, so when I look subject by subject, that’s my first question: were they accurate? Is there anywhere we need to be worried about?
We really do drill into every detail, so I’ve got to be careful to make sure I can acknowledge the great stuff that’s going on, while also striking the balance of saying that we can always do better.
Our senior leadership team returns the day before the long weekend in August and it’s at that point that the bigger conversations will start around the next part of the analysis.
But even then, we would only be making big changes if something really drastic happened.
And if that’s the case, I like to explore and get underneath it. Has something been happening in the subject more widely? What does the national data look like? Is there something we need to think about?
Asking the right questions
At this stage, we’re identifying where we need to look deeper. It is less of an instant investigation and more of a slow process of trying to work out exactly where the surprises came from. Because if you’re going to change something, you need to understand why it happened in the first place.
It’s easy to say that the issue is bad teaching, but that’s not always the case. It’s also very easy to say that you’ll change exam boards or specifications, or that you’d put the kids in for the wrong tier.
But you can be in danger of getting caught in the noise, and end up spending more time talking about exam boards and tiers than teaching and learning.
And the reality is, that’s what you need to go back and look at. Was there a leadership issue? A feedback issue? Or maybe a specification issue? If it seems we don’t fully understand the spec, what do we need to do to move that forward? More training? Maybe more classroom observations?
When a surprise does happen with results, the first question you’ve got to ask yourself is why you didn’t know beforehand.
The knee-jerk SLT reaction can be to blame teachers, but they were in your school all year, and you’re responsible for creating the environment where they can teach effectively. So you have to look at yourself first and ask what you could have done better before you start pointing to other people.
Deeper than the data
When it comes to results, we can be very focused on the data - and I say that as a mathematician and former vice principal for data - but we have to recognise that the numbers only point you in a direction.
It’s the qualitative information - the words, the stories - that tell you what you need to do next. We have to be careful about the assumptions we make from the numbers because they don’t tell the full story. And you have to take the time to listen to that full story.
Therefore the biggest question on any results day has to be: did the students get the grades that they need to move on to the next stage in their lives? After all, we are in the business of changing children’s lives for the better.
Peter Hughes is CEO of Mossbourne Federation and author of Outstanding School Leadership
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