Background: Ballymakenny College, Co. Louth
Ballymakenny College is a multi-denominational and co-educational secondary school located in Drogheda, Co. Louth. Founded in 2014, the school has grown substantially in the last decade, increasing in size from 63 students and 9 staff in its early days to over 920 students and 90 staff members at present.
Eddie Burke is Deputy Principal at Ballymakenny College, having also served as Year Head and Special Education Needs Coordinator. In those previous roles, Mr. Burke had his own system for tracking student results and progress. However, he found this to be incredibly time-consuming and could never be entirely confident in the data’s accuracy.
At the time (2021), the school had to calculate and accredit grades to students, and senior management staff found that they were somewhat lacking in exam tracking data. Noticing this gap led the school to signing up to the Athena Tracker.
Solution: A Carefully Planned Rollout
The decision to bring transformational EdTech software into a school is a positive one, but it’s not without its challenges. Often the success of a new software system depends on how it is introduced to staff and how senior staff members manage the roll-out. Getting buy-in from stakeholders at an early stage is critical. Too much, too soon, can be detrimental. For this reason, Burke made a conscious decision to drip-feed the software into the school in a systematic way.
“We took a slow and steady approach to get staff buy-in. The school’s Principal, Alan Mynes, and I completed training on the Athena Tracker. This allowed us to get up to speed with the software and its uses. Once that was finished, we sat down and made a plan for how we were going to roll out the tracker.
The rollout started with a schoolwide staff training session. This was done so that staff knew about the software and were aware of how it was introduced into the school. We then set everyone up with an activation link. The account manager was excellent with that.
After the staff training, we identified the groups we wanted to introduce the software to first. We decided that we would focus on the guidance counsellors initially as we thought that using the Athena Tracker to set targets with students would be very impactful. We had a specific training session with them before Christmas and within a week, they were meeting up with students to set aspirational targets.”
After introducing the Athena Tracker to the initial cohort, Eddie and his team shifted focus to the year heads. In a dedicated training session, they demonstrated how year heads could use the tracker, focusing on the expectation summary and identifying when students are falling below potential in multiple subjects.
They continued introducing the software to various cohorts one after another over a short period of time. This approach has been key to their success with the software.
Key Learnings & Impact
When we spoke to Mr. Burke about the school’s experience, he brought up several key learnings.
1. Changing Perceptions Related to Student Achievements
When asked about what surprised him most about the tracker, Mr. Burke made a pertinent point about how it has led staff to change their perceptions around student achievements.
“I think we all have perceptions about certain individuals. Using the tracker and seeing the results that students are getting vs their baseline potential, has surprised some of the staff about how much progress some students are making, as well as the lack of progress from other individuals.
For example, there are students who might have received a grade of 40% or 50%. Before, we might have seen those grades as not being particularly high-achieving. But now, we’ve started to view results differently. For some students, a grade of 40% or 50% represents massive progress, and would be considered a high achievement as they are performing well above their potential.”
2. The Role of the Tracker in Starting Important Conversations
Analysing Athena Tracker data on a regular basis has allowed Ballymakenny College to start important conversations with students that may not have taken place before.
Mr. Burke gave an example of how he spotted a student who had a recent dip in results, which really stood out on the tracker. After reaching out to the student, it quickly became apparent the boy was taking on too much and was overwhelmed by it.
The student was playing with the county team and representing the school across a number of disciplines. After talking to him, the student decided to scale back his extra-curricular pursuits and only play for one school team, as he felt that playing with multiple teams was spreading himself too thin.
3. Setting Incremental Targets and Getting Students Involved
During our conversation with Eddie, he explained how the school has taken an incremental or ‘mini steps’ approach to setting student targets. He also described how students were involved in this process, peeking behind the curtain and seeing their data for themselves.
“We had a 6th year student who was really concerned about reaching a certain amount of CAO points. I sat down with him and together we looked at his Athena Tracker profile. Based on his tracker, we looked at what was a realistic target for him. And then, instead of just saying, you need to jump from 60% to 80%, we broke it down into short-term targets.
For the October assessments, the goal was to close the gap from where he was to where he wants to be. We did this again after Christmas, the mocks and before the Leaving Certificate. After each exam, we sat down and looked at the profile together to see the current standing and what progress was being made.
Seeing the graph on Athena, the student was really encouraged about how close he was to achieving his ultimate target and the progress that was being made. Seeing the data in front of him removed a lot of the guesswork and brought a huge amount of clarity.”
4. Avoiding Conflict at Parent-Teacher Meetings
Eddie Burke spoke of how the school has been using the Athena Tracker to bring more clarity during parent-teacher meetings.
“Sometimes at parent-teacher meetings, you can make comments such as ‘they could do more’ or ‘they should be getting X’ and it can be taken up the wrong way. Some parents or guardians might see it as being an unsubstantiated claim about their child or they might take it personally.
Using Athena Tracker at parent-teacher meetings has made a big difference. Teachers can walk parents or guardians through their profile and provide commentary that is entirely backed by data. This has alleviated conflict and led to much more constructive conversations.”
5. Remembering the Person Behind the Data
During our conversation, Eddie brought up a key point that we believe is important for all schools to remember when they are using academic tracking software.
“The human element of academic tracking is extremely important and often overlooked. At all times, it’s important to remember that there is a human behind the data and they might be going through something. For example, if there is a sudden dip in a student’s results, that could be related to something that’s going on in their home life be it personally or socially. Or if a student underperformed in a given exam block, you might discover that XYZ happened and their mind was elsewhere.
In this way, the Athena Tracker can be a way of starting important conversations with students; conversations that open up a more human side to data analytics.”
