Research School Network: What’s Your Problem? Gathering and interpreting data to identify priorities – a useful resource from the EEF

How do we know the right things to focus on in schools? We only have so much time, resources, energy, so we can’t do everything. One of the most sensible things for us to do is to get our priority right.

The EEF’s ​‘Gathering and Interpreting Data to Identify Priorities’ process is one of many resources accompanying the Implementation Guidance Report. It can help frame our discussions and challenge our assumptions.

It’s unlikely that you have no sense of the school priorities. These will often be part of action-planning, part of a longer term process, sometimes a response to an external evaluation or internal data. But there are dangers. We can start by asking a few simple questions:

• Is this a cause or a symptom?
• Does the issue need shrinking?
• Is this the right problem?
• Is this something that is amenable to change?

You also have to be careful that you haven’t first decided on a solution and now you’re retro-fitting the problem to it.

We should ensure that we have the best data to support or challenge our hypothesis.

Schools can be very rich with data, but we can still often make decisions based on limited data points. For example, how many of us look at the ​‘gaps’ in exam results and immediately make these the focus of our action planning? It is worth triangulating (or even hexagonating?!) the data. All data sources have pros and cons, and there are optimal uses of each, as seen in the diagram below.

An awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of our data allows for honest, neutral conversations about what it does and doesn’t tell us. Yes, the Ofsted Inspector did comment on the quality of marking in English, but this does not align with our own checks and the parental survey we carried out, or indeed the outcomes in English; we had 100% satisfaction in our remote learning programme from the parents who completed the online survey, but we only received 25 responses, so we will survey all parents on the next parents evening.

The EEF share these questions to help you to do this:

• Are your biases, and those of colleagues, skewing your interpretations of the data?
• Are there significant gaps in your data? If so, are you filling these gaps with your own assumptions and generalisations?
• Is the most relevant and rigorous data — that which is most fit-for-purpose — being prioritised, while data of less relevance and rigour treated with greater caution?

Now we come back to framing our priority. You may well have gone through that process and return to the problem that was part of your original hypothesis. There is no harm in that, because now you have a more rigorous understanding of the issue.

At this point, I would recommend writing out your credible and plausible interpretation of the issue.

Outline the problem, how the data provides evidence for the problem. Create a strong argument, not to prove that you are right but to demonstrate the issue and the evidence. Ask for feedback, healthy challenge.

After completing the process, you’ll be in a far better position to identify solutions, because the problem is well understood. It helps communicate clarity and ensure ​‘buy-in’ when solutions begin to be implemented.

Next time someone asks you, ​‘What’s your problem?, you’ll have a pretty good response.