ABSTRACT
There is a widely held belief that looking at data improves learning and achievement. For instance, one of the most common OFTSED Key Issues for primary schools usually reads something like: ‘In order to improve standards, subject coordinators need to monitor attainment and progress in their subjects and evaluate the quality of teaching and learning.’ Ironic really when the team of people who reached this conclusion have usually just spent the best part of a week doing precisely the same themselves. Paying attention to pupil data, however, has rightly become a cornerstone of a national policy to drive up standards. This has led to a succession of developments in the use of assessment data, alongside the development of a range of approaches to gathering and using other forms of data in quantitative ways-from inspection judgments to pupil attitude surveys. In the past this would more likely have been presented qualitatively through words rather than statistically, using numbers, percentages and averages.
