Making sense of school data beyond the MIS: Sisra Analytics and Pupil Progress collaboration

The reality of school data

Schools are surrounded by data but making sense of it in time to act is where the real challenge lies. Teachers and senior leaders must track and evaluate assessment scores, unit marks and grade predictions to answer one crucial question: how well are our students really doing?

Unfortunately, while the systems available to schools are often individually strong, they are very often disconnected. Alongside this, schools must navigate increasingly complex examination frameworks. Often, they are facing multiple units, scaling factors, unit weightings and the application of yearly changing grade boundaries. Accurately understanding students’ current positions amongst all these variables is very challenging. It depends on robust data and specialist expertise.

As a result, leaders and teachers are often working against the clock, trying to interpret complex data quickly enough to make a difference before it’s too late.

Why the MIS alone isn’t enough

Currently, an MIS stores data well, but it doesn’t explain it. It won’t tell you how a unit score translates into a likely grade or where a pupil is at risk of falling behind. Therefore, many schools are required to use manual Excel data drops to bridge the gap and provide teachers with information they can use to improve outcomes. This approach is time consuming, prone to human error and often leaves staff questioning if they can fully trust the numbers. Alongside this, the speed at which this information is processed and analysed is crucial; the older the data, the less valuable it becomes to teachers.

Pupil Progress addresses these challenges by providing schools the opportunity to track pupil performance in real time against exam board specific criteria. The platform helps schools quickly identify learning gaps and understand the reasons behind performance. This gives teachers clarity and confidence, making it easier to act and support their students much sooner than a data drop would.

The bigger picture

Whereas Pupil Progress allows classroom teachers to identify learning gaps and act quickly, Sisra Analytics provides leadership teams with powerful summative and comparative insight. Through clear headline dashboards, charts and scatterplots, the platform gives leaders something concrete to discuss and act on. Additionally, Sisra Analytics places school performance in context by enabling comparison with over 1400 schools nationally. Measures such as the Subject Performance Index (SPI) offer a nationally comparable view of subject performance at GCSE. This allows leaders to articulate a clear narrative of where their students are performing within the national picture.

The collaboration

Both Pupil Progress and Sisra Analytics are the experts in what they do. They now wish to collectively support schools to reduce data silos and accelerate decision making. Leaders can spot an issue at subject level in Sisra Analytics, then immediately drill down into the specific units or topics causing it in Pupil Progress. This allows them to act quickly when offering intervention to individual groups of students, maximising the time they have to improve outcomes. Additionally, by delegating complex calculations to trusted systems, teachers know they can rely on the data allowing them to focus on supporting students in classrooms. This joined up approach to data allows schools to target the pupils who can shift the whole school picture and maximise impact.

Conclusion

In a system where time is limited and stakes are high, data shouldn’t slow schools down it should help them act faster and with confidence. Bringing these two approaches together gives schools exactly that. By enabling faster feedback loops and ongoing evaluation, schools can identify what is working and why within the school year and act on this promptly. This partnership supports schools to use data as a tool to accelerate improvement, not just allow accountability.

To explore these ideas in more depth, watch our webinar  featuring Brett Griffin (Founder, Pupil Progress), Chris Scarth (Juniper Education) and Victoria Merrick (CEO and Founder of MerrickEd Limited), where they discuss how joined‑up data can drive meaningful school improvement.