Highbury CollegeUsing College Data to Improve Success Rates and Sustain Excellence

Author: Scott Hermiston, John Royston-Ford, Martin Porter, Robert Higgins

Prepared for: Outstanding Showcase Event

Date: 4th November 2011

Agenda

• Welcome and Introductions• Availability and use of data• Whole College, Departmental and Team analyses• Target Setting• Support Service Impact Analyses• Success Meetings• How did we get here?

Availability and Use of Data

Student records system (EBS) has an interrogation and reporting application available to all staff with real-time information

Funding and participation data published weekly to academic and support heads

ProAchieve is updated on a weekly basis during the year and then on-demand in September-November (at least twice a week, sometimes every day)

ProAchieve used by all levels of academic staff for analysing retention and success – brings a more personal involvement in data quality assurance

Everyone has a role to play in getting the data right

College, Department and Team Analyses

Analyses of retention and emerging success are published to CLT Business Results monthly meetings, at College, SSA, Department and Team level

Student success is measured for equality and diversity indicators, plus a suite of markers that have some history or have been identified as possible issues (bike thefts, ‘Jack’, IoW residents, etc)

Support Services tasked with helping departments to tackle emerging issues

Where necessary, monitoring meetings put in place in-year to check progress of students in teams with lower than average success rates

Target Setting

Departmental success rate targets are set centrally.

Separate targets set for Good, Successful and Outstanding performance

Targets set at department level for long (split by level), short (total) and very short (total) qualifications

Separate targets for Functional & Key Skills and HEFCE provision

Rationale is published, and uses the GFE sector 90th percentile projected to the year in question with the proviso that success rates don’t decline

Targets are built to ensure that the College’s overall targets are met or exceeded

Support Service Impact Analyses

Support Services are required to monitor the effect of their services upon student success

Part of monitoring involves performance data analyses for target groups for the Service

The College identifies cohorts of students with relatively lower success rates for intervention•Victims of bicycle thefts•Young parents / carers•Pregnant teenagers•Poor or sporadic attenders

CI provides data analyses for cohorts

Success Meetings

Annual meeting for every Academic Department and Support Service, chaired by the Principal with the Executive Director (Curriculum), Head of Quality and Head of College Information.

Heads are asked to invite their staff to attend.

Academic agenda includes a line-by-line analyses of success rates in LR, ER, HE, Functional & Key Skills, Value Added and performance overall against targets.

Support agenda is about impact of the Services’ success projects – with evidence to support findings.

How did we get here?

• Whole College approach to student success• League table publication fostering competition• Extensive use of external data sources for internal

comparisons• Researching student achievement for patterns or

common identifiers between groups of non-achievers

• Academic ownership of their success data down to individual student level, and responsibility for explaining it at the Success Meetings

• Excellent working relationships between academic departments and support services