Historical, error-ridden data is costing MATs dearly

Picture the scenario: Year 11 mocks were sat and marked over a month ago; you’ve waited for data to come in from schools across the trust; your central data team is looking to use this data to give an update on Progress 8 scores so you can plan support where needed for your first set of exam results in a post-Covid era.

Now you’re sitting in a trust leadership meeting with the headline figures, and you notice a few issues: Geography has abnormally low grades, and there’s also been a problem with Maths attainment.

Are these data errors or issues that need addressing? As many multi-academy trust (MAT) leaders know, some variation of this scenario is unfortunately commonplace due to a lack of data connection between each individual academy within the trust.

In many cases, if you’re concerned about historical, error-ridden data, there’s no way to delve into the details behind the headline figures without asking those present to find out the answers for next time.

As a MAT leader, without data connection, you’re simultaneously data rich and poor, and you know in the back of your mind that whatever plan you formulate in the meeting is not fully evidence-based.

The bottom line is that your ability to make quick and reactive decisions to support critical student learning is subsequently hindered by a lack of data capabilities.  

The cause: a lack of data connectivity within MATs

As each academy in a trust may have its own set of systems, a key challenge for MATs, especially one that is growing and taking on new schools, is harvesting and making sense of data from the various systems across the trust. 

Without live, accurate data, it’s virtually impossible to assess the impact of changes such as a new attendance policy or rewards & sanctions system.

The time taken to export and process data from different sites acts as a major blocker to trust improvement.

The solution: revolutionising data connectivity with IRIS Central

To tackle the data connectivity issue within trusts, we created IRIS Central, our new tool that collates the data within your various academy systems to give you a single, centralised view in real-time.

So, say goodbye to manual exports and spreadsheets.

IRIS Central’s data presentation feature creates simplified dashboards, which not only pull the data dynamically from different Management Information Systems (MIS), but it also processes it into a readily digestible form.

You can then drill into this data from a trust-wide level to specifics on individual students and everything in between, which a static report on a piece of paper simply can’t.

Imagine your trustee meeting with IRIS Central – not only is the data you’re examining readily available, error-free and being presented in real-time, but if you notice any data trends, you can explore them right in the meeting.

Suddenly, a world of opportunity to immediately optimise and improve your trust as chances arise opens up.

Looking for more information? Click here to find out more about this and all the other great features.