The data-day reality of teaching

From the moment she wakes to the time she goes to bed, teacher ‘Kate’ is dealing with school data, says Yvonne Williams
25th March 2019, 1:17pm

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The data-day reality of teaching

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/data-day-reality-teaching
Teachers Are Drowning In Data From The Moment They Get Out Of Bed, Warns Yvonne Williams

The alarm clock wakes Kate at 6am, and another day in the life of a modern teacher begins.

She quickly washes, dresses and eats breakfast, leaving herself 10 minutes to catch up on her emails before heading to school. She checked them before bed last night, but since then a new batch of “alerts” has arrived from the school’s new pastoral data platform. Kate sighs and logs into the system. She’s still waking up so her finger slips on the penultimate key; the pink bar at the bottom of the sign-in page informs her that she’s made an error in her email address or password. She begins the signing-in process again.

She’s aware that she’s being over-conscientious with the new system. But the system allows the pastoral lead to check if teachers are logging-in regularly, so there’s a pressure to keep up. If only it were a bit quicker to get into the system, but storing logins and passwords is absolutely forbidden - so there are no shortcuts.

She skims the details, marks all the messages and hopes she will retain everything. Day-to-day information always makes sense at the time, but she struggles to make it stick in her long-term memory.


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If only the system filtered urgent, important and serious information to help her prioritise. At the moment, all the alerts feel terribly important as they pour into her emails - but, on reflection, they all all seem to be the same.

Kate gets to school about 30 minutes before the timetabled day begins. She logs in again, and an alert tells her it’s time to follow-up the latest data drop. This means individual conversations with her tutor group and targets to record. Fortunately, it’s on paper at the moment so can be done on the spot - but give it time.

Teachers drowning in data

Registration isn’t the immediate experience it used to be. There’s a little time between logins as the system catches up. It’s often quite fraught because there have been quite a few occasions when glitches have caused the system to either slow down or crash completely. Today there’s nothing to even hint that the connection isn’t working, so she attempts to log in multiple times. But nothing happens. The little circle on the screen seems to revolve endlessly as valuable minutes of pastoral time tick away agonisingly slowly. It’s all very… frustrating.

Colleagues have told her that the iPad is better ... but that’s only if you don’t have to log in each time separately.

Assembly is starting in two minutes and notices haven’t even been given out. Kate completes the contingency registration sheet and emails the school office with the names of absentees. The post-data-drop conversation with one of her form will have to wait for another occasion.

After assembly, everyone files to first lesson. Kate put the starter up on the board for pupils to get started on while she attacks the keyboard to register her subject group and ensure that they are all present. She used to have a bit of time to chat to students coming into the room but these days it takes all her concentration to log on to the registration. She knows it’s crucial to be able to spot possible truancy.

It takes a little while to get the class back on-track after leaving them to their own devices on the starter. It’s frustrating when, in the middle of a good discussion, a couple of students turn up after their music lessons and have to be recorded on the system.

Lunch for Kate is a quick sandwich at the computer as she enters her results for the non-examined components for the key stage 4 orals. The system doesn’t allow for copy-and-paste of names and candidate numbers, and there are rather a lot in the year group. Obviously, she can’t take the paperwork home with her in case it gets lost. The risk of a GDPR breach doesn’t bear thinking about, so it’s safest done in school.

The second part of lunchtime is taken up with looking at data. Apparently, there are a number of students not meeting their target grades who need to be chased up. It’s not surprising: not everyone will be on target. Does that mean she should also catch up with those over-achieving and perhaps get them to slow down a bit to ensure that all the predictive data is accurate? Better not to think about it - there are enough interventions to record on the system as it is. In spite of a few tick-boxes and click-down menus, it all takes time. Surely there never used to be quite so many instructions about students...

One of Kate’s colleagues told her that soon they will be able to put all the marks online for each assignment completed so that parents can see how their children are doing. As a parent herself, Kate can see the merits of this information-sharing. But if only every data-drop and release of information ended there. Instead, there are always a few emails from anxious parents and line-managers about what she is doing for the students who slip a grade.

The present situation is hard enough: there’s barely time to implement one set of interventions for one batch of students before starting a new set for others as well in the next data-drop. Of course - at least according to the manufacturer’s website - it’s a great system which allows teachers and leaders to see interventions. And it saves time!

Kate heads off to her afternoon registration, followed five minutes later by subject registration. It’s soon the end of the teaching day, and Kate just has time to check her email alerts before heading for home.

On her way out of school, she notes a couple of uniform infringements and has an off-the-cuff chat with a student about possible careers... before realising that both events will have to make it on to the system.

She logs back in the minute she gets home. Better to record them sooner rather than later. Is it her imagination or have a further three categories just been added?

Perhaps it would be better to simply take a vow of silence when passing students.

Yvonne Williams is a head of English and drama in a secondary school in the south of England

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