One of the key indicators of your school’s overall performance is your student’s academic performance. Ultimately, parents choose a school based on its ability to best suit their child’s needs and provide them with the best education possible. Your academic performance is one of the best advertisements for your school.
Research suggests that, outside of their child’s preference, academic reputation and exam results are the top factors impacting a parent’s choice of secondary school.
The key to improving academic performance is understanding what’s influencing the results and where you can make changes. Whether you’re confident in your current performance, or feel you could make improvements, it’s always important to have a full understanding of what’s impacting your students and your school results.
But with so many variables impacting academic performance, how can you get a better understanding of what makes up your current performance metrics? What can you do to see a real boost in your overall performance?
The key to understanding the full picture of your school is harnessing your available data. Your school management software manages all key information and is a powerful resource when the data can be collated and analysed effectively. You need to be able to understand all areas of school life.
An analytics and reporting tool is a key component in every school leader’s arsenal. The latest BI and analytics technologies enable businesses to make the most out of their databases, by collecting data and translating it into palatable insights.
Data visualisations make large amounts of data accessible to a wider audience, including school leadership teams, with efficiency and ease. This means that leaders can make smarter decisions with more confidence, as they are secure in the knowledge that any changes are backed by data.
School analytics technology should integrate with the primary management system, where all vital school data is stored. This ensures that all generated insights are based on the one source of the truth within the school’s systems.
iSAMS Central was created to enable schools and groups to make the most out of their available data. Our powerful BI tool doesn’t only integrate with the iSAMS MIS – but they do form a strong partnership that enables you to make accurate, data-backed decisions for your school performance and growth.
A BI tool like Central shows you both the bigger picture, and the details and data points behind each trend. Understand the ‘why’ behind every performance indicator and build initiatives to drive improvement based on real information. By understanding your assessment data - such as cross-school comparisons that provide student-level insights by subject, attainment, and demographic categories - you can begin to harness real-time statistics for deeper performance insights.
While a thorough analysis of your school’s individual performance is the key to building an effective plan for improvement, there are some key factors that can impact academic performance in all schools. Consider what changes you can make to better support students, staff, and parents as they engage with your school.
A recent study found that 95% of teachers are concerned about the impact of their workload on their wellbeing. It’s no secret that teachers have been struggling to manage increased class sizes, work outside of school time, and increasing performance expectations.
That’s why it’s so important to do as much as possible to support your team of teachers in their everyday roles. Ultimately, these members of staff have the primary impact and responsibility over your student’s abilities to perform academically and achieve those important exam results.
There are a variety of ways that you can look to support teachers, and it’s best to speak to them directly to discuss their needs. However, you can consider wellbeing initiatives, discussions around benefits, and helping them manage or reduce their hours.
Your software should also offer tools for helping teachers to improve their time management and reduce unnecessary admin. The iSAMS MIS and associated app provides teachers with flexibility and accessibility of key tools to complete their job, including user-friendly registers, reports, and integrations across modules. To learn more about how iSAMS supports teachers, click here.
Recent news reports have highlighted the impact that student mental health is having on their ability to perform during exam season. In 2023, experts warned that 300,000 fewer top grades were awarded in GCSE’s.
Your students spend a large portion of their time at school. It’s always been vital to support them with their overall physical health, mental health, and wellbeing as part of school safeguarding responsibilities. However, it’s just as important to their ability to achieve their potential.
Make student wellbeing a priority in your school by offering initiatives and making a concerted effort to monitor students effectively. A whole-school approach to wellbeing ensures that every member of the school body is actively aware of the needs of students.
Your school software can support you in monitoring individual students, life events, behavioural concerns, and achievements. The iSAMS Wellbeing Manager was created to enable schools to keep track of individual students’ needs and be notified of any major life changes or changes in behaviour. This ensures that appropriate actions can be taken in a timely manner to support each student. Accurate data management is at the forefront of your ability to perform in all areas of school life.
While you can make it a priority to offer students as much support as possible at school, that needs to continue when they go home. Whether that’s enabling students to complete their homework tasks effectively or ensuring they receive physical or mental health support.
This is why effective parent-school communication is vital. Your community of parents needs to be kept in the know about their child’s education and anything related to their child’s care. This ensures they are informed about what is required from them and where they can provide additional support for their child.
Ensure that each student’s parent is made aware of any health or wellbeing concerns, homework tasks, school events, parents' evenings, rewards and conduct events, and any other information that you deem necessary.
This can seem like a daunting task, especially if you have a large body of students. Your software should always support you in your goals, and the best school software should have communication facilities built in.
The iSAMS MIS provides a range of methods for staying in touch with parents, including SMS and email facilities, parent and student portals, and inbuilt notifications within a range of modules. To learn more about how iSAMS can support your parent-school communication, click here.
As mentioned previously, harnessing your data will enable you to get a better understanding of what’s happening at your school and what’s influencing your performance. This ensures that you can make smarter decisions for school growth. However, it’s important to have a process in place in order to utilise this information to its full potential.
Build a growth and performance plan based on data, but ensure that you’re reviewing that performance against expectations at regular intervals. Have your chosen actions had the impact that you expected? What can you do to continue moving in the right direction? What is working now, may not have the same impact in 12 months.
An analysis and review process ensures that you remain on track and can continue making smarter, data-backed changes that suit the needs of your schools and students in the present moment.
Implementing an analytics and BI tool is the first step to understanding academic performance at your school. iSAMS Central was created with independent school data in mind. Harness your valuable MIS data to make informed decisions on school progress and growth.
If you’d like to learn more about iSAMS Central and what it can do for your school, you can watch a demo below.