Improving Outcomes By Digging Down Deep into the Data

Aidan Severs
8 hours ago
5 min read

Improving Outcomes: A Clear Priority

Matthew and Leona had one clear priority on their Self Evaluation Form: to improve their combined score at the end of KS2. They ran an excellent school, and had done for years. They prioritised children above all - raising that percentage of children achieving expected standard across writing, maths and reading certainly wasn't just about the accountability measures. They cared about ensuring those children got the best possible outcomes.

Improving Outcomes: A Clear Starting Point

They could see from their end-of-year SATs data that outcomes in English were lower than those in maths, giving them a clear starting point for development work. Perhaps the English curriculum needed a refresh? Perhaps a more deliberate teaching sequence was needed for writing? Maybe it was something else. They weren't quite sure where to go next in order to have maximum impact.

Improving Outcomes: A Clear Goal

They wanted to ensure that their current year 6 cohort, and those who'd follow in their footsteps, had the best chance of learning all those important reading strategies and writing skills. They didn't want to let them head off to high school without a strong foundation in English. They wanted to see a combined score in line with national when it came to results day in July. They didn't want to have another year of wondering why some children weren't quite making that scaled score of 100 in reading and being disappointed come writing moderation time.

They needed clarity and the confidence to move forward in a way that would make a difference to the children and their outcomes.

Improving Outcomes: Finding A Clear Way Forward

After an inspirational day of questioning, listening, touring the school, and writing an innovative context statement for their SEF, we sat down to work out what should be done about their year 6 combined score for 2026 and beyond.

Anyone who's worked with me knows that I ask a lot of questions, and this day wasn't going to be any different:

"You want to raise your combined score by 12 percentage points. Who are those children?"

That particular piece of data analysis had not yet been done. They weren't sure.

"Who are the children who are not yet working at the expected level across reading, writing and maths, but who are most likely to get there by May/June?"

Another piece of information that had not yet been gleaned from recent assessment information.

After a few more questions ("Who are the children who are already working at expected across the 3 subjects?" "Who are the children who are already working at expected across 2 of the subjects and are close in the other?" "Are there any children still working towards in 2 or 3 subjects but are already very close?" "Are they likely to make it in the time left if everything continues as it is?" etc & etc) we had found a clear way forward - a useful way to spend the next bit of time to really help the school to move into that place of clarity and confidence in their next steps.

Improving Outcomes: Identifying Clear Next Steps

"Shall we have a look at the data then?"

This revealed that another valuable next step was needed: although lots of data had been captured on well-made spreadsheets, there was no single point of reference that lined up recent writing teacher assessment data with recent practice test reading and maths scores. There was nowhere that, at a glance, you could see which children were currently sitting within that combined percentage, and which children weren't. There was no easy way of working out quickly which children needed a push in just one of the three subjects, or which ones were just below expected in all three.

So we started to put together a list of next steps that would help them to move forward towards improving outcomes with clarity and confidence:

Create a spreadsheet to track combined scores
Use it to identify at least the following groups of children:
- Children already achieving combined
- Children achieving EXS in 2 out of 3 subjects
- Children close to achieving EXS in all 3 subjects
Take the writing and reading papers of the second group of children and build a picture of what they might need to reach EXS by:
- assessing (and moderating current assessment of) their writing
- gap analysis on the reading papers (bearing in mind that vocabulary difficulties will impact on retrieval, inference and others of the areas of content domain)
- speak to teachers about their gaps, misconceptions, difficulties, next steps etc
Use the outcome of that picture-building to evaluate current English curriculum and pedagogy
Use the outcome of that evaluation to make relevant changes to English curriculum and pedagogy
Ensure that teachers seek more regular opportunities to teacher responsively to these particular children in everyday English lessons (and other lessons where reading and writing are embedded)

Improving Outcomes: Staying True To The Mission

Points 4 and 5 were crucial. Remember the true purpose that Matthew and Leona had? That all pupils should achieve as highly as possible? This data analysis exercise wasn't to become a playing of the game - it was never about the data, and always about the children. It would be unethical to identify a few children and then focus on meeting their needs without meeting the needs of children who might be considered less likely to make it to EXS in all three subjects. The data highlighted an issue to be fixed, but better data was only ever going to be achieved by better teaching and learning opportunities and outcomes for individual, actual children. That's why the process of digging down deep into the data was so important.

By carrying out point 4, school leaders can then carry out point 5 in such a way that all children benefit. The group of children identified in point 2 become a sample of the data: if they are struggling with a certain aspect of the curriculum, and it's related to the way it is being taught, then changes to the curriculum and pedagogy can have a positive impact on the rest of the class too.

Improving Outcomes: A Clear Plan

Although only time will tell whether or not they increase that combined score, Matthew and Leona now have a clear plan to move forwards with. At the start of the day they weren't sure how they were going to go about effecting change but by the time we finished they had complete clarity as to what their next steps needed to be.