A Q&A with Marian Wheeler, GDST Data Systems Manager, Girls' Day School Trust
As GDST Data Systems Manager at the Girls’ Day School Trust, Marian leads 26 schools in their use of data systems and MIS. This role encompasses the development of best practice, organisation data standards, supporting the introduction of new systems, analytics, and the development and delivery of training to empower the schools in use of systems and data.
Marian’s passion for MIS systems and data comes from many years working in the education sector, within Local Authorities, as well as schools. Her experience includes over a decade working for a Local Support Unit, supporting around 800 schools in their use of the SIMS MIS, with a particular focus on the use of systems and data to support school improvement and consultancy work advising SLT on exploiting MIS technology to its fullest potential.
From your perspective, why is data so crucial for leaders in today’s education landscape?
Marian: I see the School Improvement Plan at the heart of the planning and strategic activity that school leaders will be doing. A key part of that work is around effective self-evaluation and understanding what’s going on in school now, which obviously then informs how they determine what actions they take. Having good data in place will allow people to plan effectively, and the decisions will be based on strong evidence. Not only are leaders then able to plan, but they should also be able to identify their key performance indicators to effectively monitor and track progress and review where they’re going. That may mean reviewing their planning, as they are evaluating their school improvement activities consistently.
This is a big piece now for schools: the ability to examine the whole picture of the school. It’s one of the things I used to talk a lot about with schools when I was a SIMS Consultant: avoid looking at any particular set of data in isolation. You can’t just look at attendance and determine that attendance is not great without looking at the other factors contributing to that. You can’t look at attainment and make the judgement that all these students aren’t doing very well in English, without considering the whole picture. You have to be looking at all of the factors that contribute to outcomes and obviously the MIS can play a big part in that.
The contextual data, the things that are influencing outcomes, are crucial, and that can really support school improvement. If you’re able to identify if there are particular groups of students that may need a different type of support or a different approach, this allows schools to influence outcomes and support improving teaching and learning, which is ultimately what we’re there for.
One of the key messages I have always talked about is that [data] doesn’t give you the answers, but it helps you identify the questions to ask to actually make a difference supporting school improvement.
Data is crucial in areas such as safeguarding to establish an early warning system to protect students and identify issues early on – whether through conduct, attendance, or a sudden change in attainment for a particular student. Data analysis can be used to identify where there could be a potential safeguarding issue. Safeguarding is about ensuring that all students can achieve to the best of their potential and data analysis can really support that work.
Also, schools must be compliant and monitor activities against statutory and regulatory requirements, whether this is attendance or for immigration purposes, where we have international students in independent schools, in particular. Data really helps support the school’s operational business as much as it does the teaching and safeguarding.
What types of data would be most valuable for informing school leadership decisions?
Marian: A big part of this is the contextual and demographic data, because your answers will tend to come from understanding what might be influencing something. For schools, academic attainment data is a big part of student information and how they are progressing towards targets. Data analysis allows us to think about reviewing those targets and ensuring we’re always challenging students to the best of their abilities.
Conduct data, in particular, is important because, again, it can raise many flags about safeguarding. Negative behaviour could be ‘not doing homework’, but it could also be something like coming into school and being really tired, hungry, or emotional. These are potential red flags for safeguarding issues. Looking at the positive side of things, lots of schools have reward systems where students get points for positive behaviours. Exploring the impacts of the conduct policy and understanding how positive rewards support a reduction in negative behaviours is key, and that your data supports agendas like safeguarding and well-being in particular.
There are key, or what I would call ‘vulnerable’ groups, for want of a better description, where the data is so important: these include special educational needs, deprivation indicators such as free school meals, or looked-after children. Grouping students by ethnicity and languages can help paint a picture of what’s going on in terms of individual student performance or for a group of students, for example. Again, particularly with international students, understanding things like nationality, ethnicity, and languages is important. We want to celebrate the culture of our students and ensure that everyone feels part of the community. Our schools may work on bringing together students who speak the same home language and share their culture. The GDST also challenges students to take qualifications that the school may not always offer as standard examination courses, because they already speak a different language fluently. There’s lots of key elements of contextual data that are important in understanding the school picture.
Also, schools should look at things like national baselines and understand what the bigger picture looks like. As we know, there are differences between different types of schools, but it’s useful to understand the national trends and what’s going on, as well as the work that’s being done more widely in the education sector.
Staff data is also critical for evaluating recruitment and retention, which is a key issue now in education. We must understand how we can use our data to work towards improving that and supporting the quality of the working experience within our organisation’s teaching staff.
Also, grouping staff together in different ways can encourage them to learn and share good practice. This is an area where the GDST excels. We have good communities of teaching staff that come together across our schools and work has been done with these communities to explore how to get the best from data.
Financial data is obviously important for us as independent schools, where funding is a completely different model from the maintained sector. I understand obviously that financial data is going to be important to all schools, but because we’re very much a ‘business’, being a group of independent schools, financial data is critical for us.
Read next: Building a data-literate workforce
Marian’s Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marian-wheeler/
The GDST website: https://www.gdst.net/about-us/about-the-gdst/