Background - St. Gerald's DLS College
Shaun Burke is the principal of St. Gerald’s DLS College in Castlebar, Co. Mayo, an all-boys school with just over 660 students and over 60 staff members. St. Gerald’s is a voluntary Catholic secondary school that was established by the De La Salle Brothers in 1908 and has a rich history of excellence in teaching and extra-curricular activity.
When we sat down with Mr. Burke to discuss his experience of using Athena Reports, this reputation was something he was quick to touch upon.
“There’s a proud academic tradition in the school. Students and the teachers work exceptionally hard and we really try to foster an inclusive environment where every student can be their individual best.
We’re blessed that we have teachers that work incredibly hard and care about what they do. And ‘care’ is the word. If you have a student in front of you, and they feel like you care for them, the shutters come down, they want to embrace it and they get engaged with the information you are giving them. If you can create that bond and relationship, the teaching part becomes easy.”
Challenge - A Time-Consuming Process
St. Gerald’s DLS College started working with Athena Analytics in 2019. At that point, the school had been carefully recording state exam results for at least five years. While Mr. Burke wasn’t the school principal at the time, he saw the time and effort that the principal was putting in to analyse all the results as soon as they came out.
“He went through every grade and ensured then that all the data was correct and everything lined up. He would then compare it against the SEC (The State Examinations Commission) data and would feed that back to the teachers. But it was hugely time-consuming for him.
He would spend a huge amount of his free time going through the data and would often have to bring work home with him.
Once we heard of Athena Reports, it was a no-brainer to try it out. In our roles, time is everything. If you can get back a number of hours for a small financial outlay, it makes a lot of sense. I have an eight, six and three-year-old at home so I wouldn’t be allowed to spend that free time on analysis!
We’re in a position where we can work with a team and we’re very happy to do so.”
Solution - Athena Reports State Exam Analysis
Athena Reports provides schools with in-depth reports of their Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate results. When schools receive their state exam results, they send it to our team at Athena Analytics, who then send back detailed state exam analysis within five days, and often faster upon request. This includes in-depth analysis of results vs national figures, a subject-by-subject comparison, and a full breakdown of participation rates, student performance and other metrics.
The speed, level of insight and time-saving aspects of Athena Reports is something that really appealed to Principal Burke and his team.
The reports also afforded Mr. Burke the opportunity to initiate important conversations right away:
“For us, the speed in which the reports come back once we input the results is huge. When we send off our results, we generally get the report within 36 hours. It’s practically live data. We can sit down and analyse the data straight away. It’s been revolutionary in that way. You get asked for stats by the press, the parents or other people coming into the school, so it’s great to have the data so quickly.
For the teachers, it lets them know exactly what’s happening and we can also see participation rates in certain subjects, especially in terms of the core subjects: English, Irish and Maths. This is important, particularly at Junior Cycle level, as you want to keep higher level participation rates as high as you can, and luckily we’re surpassing national rates all of the time. This gives us an indication that we’re empowering the students to be their individual best and that the teachers feel that okay we can push these students on further.
Once we get the reports, teachers can bring the data to subject department meetings. I’ll meet with individual Leaving Cert teachers and the heads of department for the Junior Cycle and we’ll discuss all the results in detail.”
Result & Impact
For Principal Shaun Burke, the true value of Athena Reports goes beyond just saving time and getting detailed insights back quickly.
It is a way of benchmarking and showing how St. Gerald’s College compares to the rest of the country. It is also a vital communication tool and a means of opening important conversations and planning for the year ahead.
Comparing Results to National Figures
“It’s great to get the analysis because it’s showcasing where we are compared to the national average. As schools, we’re all in competition. With Athena Reports you’re able to take the graphs and everything else, and showcase them at open nights, at parents association, and at board of management meetings and clearly highlight what’s happening in the school.
We are very open and don’t hide anything. Parents can see exactly how the school is performing and what kind of results our students are achieving.”
Kickstarting Important Conversations
“We share the reports with department heads at junior cycle level and individual teachers at senior cycle level. I then have informal 15-minute conversations with all the teachers individually. We discuss what exactly we need to improve, what they feel the subject needs, is there more time needed in certain areas etc. We’re doing our best to support the teachers and shine a light on where we stand, whether there’s been a dip or a rise in results.
At the start of the year, I meet all the department heads to discuss their planning, discuss timetabling, discuss their subject needs and what they need to do their job effectively.”
The School Prospectus
When it comes to sharing information, St. Gerald’s College goes a step further by adding graphs from Athena Reports to the school prospectus. In the past few years, this one act has become a yardstick for school performance and has provided a huge level of transparency to all interested parties.
“We print the bar graph in our prospectus each year. It’s the graph that shows you the number of students who got certain grades — 600+, 550 to 600, etc. It’s beautifully laid and shows what everything means on the side. With this graph, parents can see exactly how the school is performing and see that we’re not hiding anything.
Each year, we show this chart from the year previous. We also show results from the previous five years so that everyone can see that the results we are achieving aren’t just a one-off!”
