What is a Whole School Approach to Academic Monitoring?

A whole school approach is a framework for academic monitoring that takes into consideration all members of the school community: students, teachers, school management, and parents.  Sharing a common approach to academic monitoring and assessment across the school community works towards the goal of creating a supportive educational environment that nurtures every student’s potential.

Our mission with the Athena Tracker is to help every school figure out where a student’s potential lies so they can then help them achieve their true potential.

Using this approach provides consistent, reliable data.  This leads to insights that educators can use to make informed decisions on how to best support every individual student. As Alonzo et al. put it in ‘Leading an Assessment Reform: Ensuring a Whole-School Approach for Decision Making’:

‘To maximise the benefits of teacher decision-making, there is a need to ensure that all teachers within the school are assisted to develop a whole school approach to ensure that all students across different stages of learning receive the support they need’

Goal Setting and Getting Students More Involved

Engaging on a whole school basis encourages students to reflect upon their own learning.  Students can set goals and assess their own progress with the guidance of subject teachers and school support teams.  Including parents in the process and sharing impartial data in a meaningful way supports teachers in communicating their insight and knowledge about individual.  This contributes to the development of a common understanding across the entire school community.

Here’s what Cormac Flynn, Principal at Inver College recommends:

‘If you are thinking about implementing Athena into your school, make sure you put it at the centre of the assessment policy, and not at the fringes, because it has a lot to offer. If it’s at the fringes, and it’s not implemented fully it doesn’t have the effect that it would have if it was front and centre.

When our parents come into parent teacher meetings, and we’re able to provide them with the Athena Tracker information, it’s a game changer. So, you know, embrace it fully and run with it.’

Academic Monitoring and Athena Tracker

Traditional academic tracking analyses students based on academic ability: high, average, and low. The Athena Tracker does something different – rather than comparing a student to their peer group, it highlights when an individual drops below their own individual potential, enabling a school to intervene quickly and provide support if required. Academic monitoring is a part of a teacher’s toolkit, complementing other sources of assessment data including observation and classroom interactions.

The Athena Tracker works by taking all the exam data available about the student and forecasting the most likely outcome in a visual way.  Regular usage of the software by all users leads to early intervention, giving each student the best possible opportunity to achieve their potential.  A whole school approach that puts academic monitoring front and centre will get the best usage from the Athena Tracker.

Schools who have been using the Athena Tracker have shared their experience with us, and a common recommendation is to use common papers across subject departments for in-house exams like Christmas and Summer. Here’s what Dr. Orla Walsh, Deputy Principal of Mount Sackville has to say:

‘We started realising that one of the most important parts is to have common papers across subject departments. The business of me giving a spelling test on the key terms, and you giving a test on calculus, and then one girl; the same girl getting 93 and 43, it just doesn’t work.

We realised very quickly that everybody in the subject department had to give a common paper. And when you give common papers with the same weight across the board, every month, this actually is unbelievably helpful.’

A Collaborative Approach to Academic Monitoring 

Creating a collaborative working environment for subject department teachers can be very helpful. Subject departments can come together to agree on areas of focus for assessment so that examinations for subjects are comparable. Dr. Ward tells us that:

‘It really has empowered us to work as subject departments, and everybody in the maths department is in the same place and on the same page, literally; In 5th year, in 6th year, in 3rd year; and that’s a really helpful thing, because there’s a lot of collaboration going on now, and there’s a lot of collaboration that wasn’t going on perhaps before […] So, it makes a lot of sense, and a lot of people are helping each other, and we find that that’s a great help to us.’

That is not to say, however, that a teacher’s pedagogical and creative individuality cannot be encouraged. Teachers have an invaluable personal knowledge built on daily classroom interactions, observations, and professional experience. With the Athena Tracker, teachers can upload their own in-class tests which do not feed into the statistical model, allowing them to design and upload their own classroom-based tests, thus allowing for a differentiated approach.

A Whole School Approach in Action

A whole school approach therefore leads to collective responsibility and accountability for every student, something that Alonzo et al. believe is required in building an assessment culture.  Rachel O’Connor’s experience with the Athena Tracker echoes this.

The Athena Tracker is a powerful and easy to use tool that helps schools to identify patterns and focus on those students who may be drifting below their potential.  Adopting a whole school approach to assessments works hand-in-hand with getting the best out of the software.

We are passionate about what we do at Athena Analytics.  Our solutions are now being used by well over half the secondary schools in Ireland. We have seen the positive impact the Athena Tracker can have on students, and we want to provide that to others.  

If you would like to find out more, check out the Athena Tracker page.

Alternatively, you can join one of our regular information sessions, where we introduce schools to the software.