When C2k procured Capita’s integrated management information software SIMS.net for all schools in Northern Ireland, there was concern in some quarters that it could lead to ‘paralysis by analysis’. With ICT now at the centre of teaching and learning, schools have the propensity to generate huge amounts of data but, as Tony Devlin, Principal of Holy Trinity Primary School in Cookstown, explains, fears that SIMS would lead to unnecessary number crunching appear to be unfounded. His experience of SIMS is that teachers are using the detailed analysis of data to improve pupil performance in the classsroom.
Holy Trinity is a co-ed maintained school with over 700 pupils and thirty plus teaching staff. It is one of a growing number of schools across Northern Ireland to recognise the benefits an integrated management information system like SIMS can bring to recording and analysing class assessments
Children from Primary 2 through to Primary 7 are continually assessed and not surprisingly this generates a huge amount of information. Before SIMS, any kind of meaningful analysis of the data was very time consuming and not always productive. SIMS on the other hand gives a detailed breakdown of the assessments for individual or groups of pupils at the stroke of a keyboard, allowing teachers to make better use of the assessment data.
“ICT is at the centre of all our teaching and learning at Holy Trinity and for the past two years, we have been using the Assessment Manager module of SIMS.net to support good practice in all areas of the curriculum,” says Tony.
“SIMS is an invaluable source of information which gives teaching staff a much better understanding of the learning needs and abilities of each child. This information can have many uses: it can alert the teachers to specific problems by highlighting underperformance in a particular area so that they can put appropriate learning strategies in place and then track the progress of the strategies. An analysis of the assessments also gives teachers a sound basis for giving feedback to parents”
“We analyse the pupils’ assessments as a way of monitoring and evaluating their performance to facilitate overall school improvement. There is evidence that the data now available through Assessment Manager can act as a catalyst for more customised teaching and learning for the individual child and groups of children - this undoubtedly raises expectations and overall standards.”
The Holy Trinity Principal acknowledges that some schools were concerned that SIMS would shift the focus from teaching and learning to data collection, but he says this has certainly not been his experience.
“We’re even more focused on the learning needs of individual children than ever because SIMS (together with other interactive tests like INCAS) has helped to highlight pupils’ strengths and weaknesses. The data can easily be used to highlight different issues, for example, are girls performing better than boys in Maths or English or visa versa? You can also see how a child is performing in comparison to others in the same year group or how EAL children or Special Needs children are performing in their assessments.”
“Teachers enter the information in their classroom and it is automatically linked to other modules in SIMS such as Attendance, and SEN. We can see for example if there is a correlation between performance and attendance. We can identify patterns for different individuals or year groups and then address under achievement in any area. Another advantage is that the information is continually being updated – unlike previous records which sat in filing cabinets. To gather this information in the past would have been very time consuming.”
“With schools having to be more and more accountable, staff time was increasingly being taken up with collecting and collating information and this left little time to analyse it, never mind make good use of it,” he says.
“There is no point in collecting all this information unless you are going to make meaningful use of it. SIMS helps us generate the relevant reports and then use the information as best we can in the classroom.”
“Information from Assessment Manager can be quickly exported into an Excel spreadsheet and presented in a graphical format which makes for ease of comparison between classes or individual pupils.”
“It can be used for tracking progress of pupils against targets set at the beginning of the year or to identify children that may have learning difficulties and take appropriate intervention. All information is recorded and summary reports can be generated at any time – for example if a parent is meeting a teacher - this informs planning, identifies priorities for the class, year group and comments on child’s progress.”
According to Tony, Assessment Manager is a useful tool which has contributed significantly to pupil achievement by giving management, teachers, pupils’ and parents the information needed to make the right learning decisions.
“SIMS gives the teacher access to a lot of information about the pupils they are teaching and that helps them make informed decisions in the classroom. It is a very effective way of identifying dips in a child’s performance before they become a bigger problem. Although we make quite a bit of use of the data we are very aware that we are probably only scratching the surface of what this software has to offer.”
“Having such detailed information on pupil assessments helps the teacher tailor the learning programme to suit the individual pupils’ needs. We find it can also help motivate pupils by giving them achievable goals to work towards, based on their past performance.”
Schools like Holy Trinity that use SIMS have access to training and technical support to ensure that both teaching and administrative staff are getting the most out of the software package and that any problems that arise are quickly resolved.
“Assessment Manager has the capacity to generate so much information and we are very fortunate to have the support of Damian Harvey, our C2k School Support Officer who has worked with staff to develop their understanding of the software.”
“We were very fortunate to have been involved at the early stages of the development of Assessment Manager in the Primary School sector and to have the support of Damian Harvey and his C2K Manager Avril Allen.”
Tony Devlin is very positive about the benefits of Assessment Manger. “To be honest, we’re still coming to terms with it and learning new functions all the time. Regular training courses are very beneficial. The programme is continually being upgraded and becoming more and more responsive so although we are only scratching the surface, we can see its potential.”
“We are gradually getting more adept at using it and for the past three years all school reports sent home to parent have been generated by Assessment Manager. It’s important though that we are not just accumulating information for the sake of it. The purpose has to be to make more effective use of teachers’ time and their expertise in the classroom.“
“It is important to strike the right balance and extract the right information to enable teaching staff to do their job professionally.”
“Schools are constantly seeking to improve pupil performance and raise standards. While it is impossible to attribute these improvements to one single factor the use of Assessment Manager and the data, which it produces, has helped enormously in this task.”
