Highbury College
Using College Data to Improve Success
Rates and Sustain Excellence
Author:
Prepared for:
Date:
Scott Hermiston, John Royston-Ford, Martin
Porter, Robert Higgins
Outstanding Showcase Event
4th November 2011
Agenda
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Welcome and Introductions
Availability and use of data
Whole College, Departmental and Team analyses
Target Setting
Support Service Impact Analyses
Success Meetings
How did we get here?
Availability and Use of Data
Student records system (EBS) has an interrogation
and reporting application available to all staff with realtime information
Funding and participation data published weekly to
academic and support heads
ProAchieve is updated on a weekly basis during the
year and then on-demand in September-November (at
least twice a week, sometimes every day)
ProAchieve used by all levels of academic staff for
analysing retention and success – brings a more
personal involvement in data quality assurance
Everyone has a role to play in getting the data right
College, Department and Team Analyses
Analyses of retention and emerging success are
published to CLT Business Results monthly meetings,
at College, SSA, Department and Team level
Student success is measured for equality and diversity
indicators, plus a suite of markers that have some
history or have been identified as possible issues (bike
thefts, ‘Jack’, IoW residents, etc)
Support Services tasked with helping departments to
tackle emerging issues
Where necessary, monitoring meetings put in place inyear to check progress of students in teams with lower
than average success rates
Target Setting
Departmental success rate targets are set centrally.
Separate targets set for Good, Successful and
Outstanding performance
Targets set at department level for long (split by level),
short (total) and very short (total) qualifications
Separate targets for Functional & Key Skills and
HEFCE provision
Rationale is published, and uses the GFE sector 90th
percentile projected to the year in question with the
proviso that success rates don’t decline
Targets are built to ensure that the College’s overall
targets are met or exceeded
Support Service Impact Analyses
Support Services are required to monitor the effect of
their services upon student success
Part of monitoring involves performance data analyses
for target groups for the Service
The College identifies cohorts of students with
relatively lower success rates for intervention
• Victims of bicycle thefts
• Young parents / carers
• Pregnant teenagers
• Poor or sporadic attenders
CI provides data analyses for cohorts
Success Meetings
Annual meeting for every Academic Department and
Support Service, chaired by the Principal with the
Executive Director (Curriculum), Head of Quality and
Head of College Information.
Heads are asked to invite their staff to attend.
Academic agenda includes a line-by-line analyses of
success rates in LR, ER, HE, Functional & Key Skills,
Value Added and performance overall against targets.
Support agenda is about impact of the Services’
success projects – with evidence to support findings.
How did we get here?
• Whole College approach to student success
• League table publication fostering competition
• Extensive use of external data sources for internal
comparisons
• Researching student achievement for patterns or
common identifiers between groups of nonachievers
• Academic ownership of their success data down to
individual student level, and responsibility for
explaining it at the Success Meetings
• Excellent working relationships between academic
departments and support services