In this blog post, we look at the ways in which schools have been incorporating the Athena Tracker into their end-of-year student awards.
The end-of-year student awards ceremony is an integral part of any school’s calendar. While many schools hand out awards throughout the year, be they class awards, attendance awards or competition awards, the end-of-year awards are particularly important and poignant occasions. These awards provide schools with a chance to acknowledge and formally recognise the incredible achievements of their students. It is during this ceremony that schools announce their Student of the Year, Sportsperson of the Year, Outstanding Academic Excellence Awards, and often share individual awards for academic achievement in each subject.
At Athena Analytics, we are continually impressed by the ways that schools incorporate the Athena Tracker into everyday school life, especially when it comes in an unexpected fashion. We are accustomed to seeing schools use the Athena Tracker at parent-teacher meetings, for reviewing exam results, for setting aspirational targets, and for pinpointing students that may require additional support. However, we are also delighted to discover that the Athena Tracker is playing a key role in the end-of-year academic awards.
In this blog we will look at 3 ways that schools have been incorporating the Athena Tracker in their student awards night. This includes one way that we believe is helping schools to reimagine the way that we think about academic awards.
1. Positive Behaviour and Contribution Awards
Being an exemplary student goes beyond academic achievement alone. Many schools acknowledge this in their end-of-year awards ceremony by handing out community awards, behaviour awards, spirit awards, creativity awards, and ‘hidden hero’ awards.
These awards lean heavily towards extra-curricular activities and acknowledging students who contribute to the spirit of the school community in various ways.
While these awards are sometimes hard to quantify, many schools have been using the Notes feature within the Athena Tracker to track student behaviour throughout the year with notes such as “outstanding behaviour in class for the past three months”, “great contributor to in-class discussions”, or “always on hand to help peers”. The Notes section of a student’s Athena Tracker profile has also been used to record specific achievements such as “best essay writer in the class”, “best oral exam”, “best art work”, or more miscellaneous items such as “stellar attendance and behaviour in study class”, “student has been lending a hand in training the first year football team” or “student mentors a younger year group”.
These notes are then reviewed at the end of the year to get a more rounded picture of each student’s year. They can also be used to help decide the Overall Student of the Year.
2. Target Grades and Achieving Goals
What does success mean for a student? A rudimentary definition of success is the accomplishment of an aim or objective.
With that in mind, schools have been taking the ‘Target Grades’ feature into consideration when deciding end-of-year awards. If each student in a year group sets their target grades at the start of the year, a school can then reflect on target vs actual grades at the end of the year. This shows students who have achieved their own goals and are succeeding in their own very personal way.
While this isn’t a fool-proof formula for acknowledging academic achievement, it is a great way for schools to uncover students who set themselves a goal and achieved it.
3. Academic Achievement Awards
While we love how schools have used target grades and the notes features, we have been most encouraged by how schools are incorporating Athena Tracker’s ‘baseline potential grade’ into their end-of-year awards, with many schools even redefining ‘Academic Achievement Awards’.
Traditionally, academic achievement awards are given to the students who achieve the highest grade in a given subject or the best results across the spectrum of subjects. In the past, many schools have honoured their top-30, top-20 or top-10 performers. This is based purely on results and which students achieved the highest marks.
However, more and more, we are hearing of how schools are basing academic achievement awards solely on Athena Tracker data. This shifts the emphasis from being less about outcomes and more about outcomes relative to a student’s unique potential. By reviewing Athena Tracker data, schools can see which students are exceeding their own unique potential to the greatest extent and which students have demonstrated the greatest improvements throughout the year. Schools might decide to award students who are exceeding their potential in the most subjects or by the greatest margin.
In this way, schools are honouring students who may have otherwise gone unnoticed e.g. a student who had an Expected Result of 60 but achieved a 75. It also is a way of acknowledging effort and sheer determination to go above and beyond who is expected of them.
Basing academic achievement awards on Athena Tracker speaks to a new way of viewing student results, that doesn’t just focus on who achieved the highest results. Instead, it looks at a much more meaningful and important metric — who is maximising their own unique potential?
By shifting this focus, schools are reimagining the very idea of academic achievement awards and shining a light on a cohort of students that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
A big thank you to all schools who have incorporated the Athena Tracker into their end-of-year awards. To learn more about the software, check out the Athena Tracker page.
