Where, oh where would teachers be without data?

It allows us to analyse, plan and improve the provision of education for all our students. Right?

Well, there is another view.

One that suggests data is actually, quite simply, a massive waste of everyone’s flipping time.

As a social science teacher, I see the value of thoughtfully gathered, large-scale data through which we can identify patterns and develop better ways of working. The problem is that this is not always what we get.

Ask most practising teachers about data and you’ll get some, let’s say…interesting responses. If you believe we should all bow down to the king that is data, you should probably stop reading now. If you’re of the opposite persuasion, you’ll (hopefully) find yourself cheering in glee at the following five reasons why data, quite frankly, sucks.

School data is sketchy

The data that informs target grades comes to teachers from a variety of sources - SATs, CATs, baseline tests, ALIS scores, teacher assessment and so on. These are not equally reliable and they don’t all offer equally valid measures of a student’s ability.

It’s also not uncommon for data simply to be missing. Worse, missing data often gets filled in somewhere along the line based on…who knows what? And the problem of shonky data tends to multiply over time.

It’s an open secret that most teachers will occasionally “tweak” their results to show that a student’s on target. Why? Because otherwise they have to take the blame and probably plan some intervention to deal with it.

People don’t understand how statistics work

I’m no maths genius, but I’ve often been asked to use data in a way it’s just not designed to be used. Data is useful for finding trends and patterns across large populations, but not explaining individual results.

That’s why data should mostly be used by school managers who can see large enough datasets, not by teachers for whom it’s rarely relevant.

Such is the lack of understanding of basic maths that I once heard the person responsible for all the data collection and analysis across the school telling the assembled staff that he wanted to make sure “every student in the school is above-average”, which suggested he was a little shaky on the concept of averages.

It confuses students

How should students respond to knowing their target grades? If it’s high, the pressure is piled on. If it’s low, it’s demotivating.

Some might be inspired to work harder and prove the system wrong, but just as many will accept that the data probably knows best. After all, we keep telling them how reliable it is…

It takes up too much time

If we can accept that recording, analysing and responding to data isn’t always particularly useful, then it would be great if teachers had less of it to do.

A teacher’s time is finite; the more of it spent on one task, the less spent on something else. And it’s not like there aren’t many far-more-useful things teachers could be using that time for, like planning, marking or just talking to their students (or leaving work an hour earlier!)

So what?

There’s a final question that might turn even the most ardent fan of the quantitative approach to teaching. Even if we accept that the baseline data is reliable and the target grades are valid, the big question remains: so what?

In the end, a teacher knowing a student’s target grade, aspirational or otherwise, isn’t really going to change how they help them. Regardless of whether we think a student is capable of a 9 or a 3, we do the same thing, we help them do better.

Ask yourself this, if a student is above target, do we stop helping them? Do we tell them to take their foot off the gas because they’ve done enough? Of course not. We encourage them to work even harder. What if a student’s below target? Do we shout at them until they pull their finger out and achieve their scientifically verified potential? No, we try to help them do better, too.

Teachers don’t require an Excel spreadsheet to know who’s slacking and needs a kick up the arse, and who’s ready for the stretch-and-challenge tasks.

Data has its uses, but for the most part, it should remain in the hands of managers (at least the ones who understand it), and need never rear its ugly head in the classroom.

We need to stand firm against the tyranny of data.

Next time you’re facing another data dump, consider this (final scientifically verified and definitely not made up) statistic: 98.6 per cent of teachers have better things to do with their time.

Callum Jacobs has been teaching in secondary schools for more than 20 years