I do love a spreadsheet. There are few things as elegant as those columns and rows of numbers all lined up in the order that you want them in. And, with over 1300 boys here at the school, all doing multiple exams and assessments across a range of subjects, there are a lot of numbers to put into a lot of columns. It is a truly beautiful thing (at this point I am thinking I might need to get out a little bit more…).

Now that the weather has turned a little colder, it has become the season of spreadsheets at Newington. At this mid-year point, students have completed examinations and teachers have marked and returned assessments. The Half Yearly Reports have been written for each boy and their performance in each subject summarised (more often than not in numbers or grades) to give us all an idea of how each boy is travelling in each part of his academic program.

But, what I love more than the numbers (and even the graphs) are the stories that lie behind each cell in each spreadsheet or figure on a report. Each part of each number for each boy represents a separate event at school in the past semester. It might have been some research a boy did, or a presentation they gave, or how well they responded to a problem in a test, or performed in a production. They are individual stories in their own right; stories about what boys have done and how well they did it, or how they tried something different and what the impact might have been.

Often the conversation the boys will have at this time of year with their parents and their teachers will be about changing the numbers in the cells in the spreadsheets. Increasing the size of some (usually the ones that show marks) or decreasing the size of others (the ones with the rankings) is usually their aim. But too often for my liking, that is where the conversation stops.

We can forget that each number is a story and, to change the number, we need to rewrite the story. Educational research by a broad range of academics highlight that the quality of feedback and evaluation on assessment is the most significant factor in improving student performance. In other words, it is how students ask themselves (with the help of their parents and teachers) three questions:

1. What are the things I have been doing that have worked and helped me, and what are the ones that haven’t?

How has the way that a boy has approached his learning contributed to his success? Has he been (honestly) conscientious in his efforts? Has he approached the way he works in class differently? Has he identified a weakness, and put a strategy in place already?

2. What are the things the numbers are saying that I am yet to show that I can do?

What is the real difference between the results he wanted to get, and the ones he did? The answer lies in specific concepts, skills or depth of understanding that he did not demonstrate over the course of the term. All boys should be encouraged to work through their assessments, and draw out specifically what they would do differently to change their result.

3. What will I change in the next six months?

Changes in habits and the way boys approach their learning means their performance improves. The answer is rarely ‘work  harder’ or ‘study more’; it is usually ‘do an extra question each week that requires me to apply a case study ’, ‘make sure I focus more on the definitions of terms at the start of each topic’, ‘ask my teacher for some help in learning how to plan my essays’ or ‘work out a study plan that I can stick to’.

The answers to each of these questions are specific, they may only apply to one subject, and they should help work out how to change the way a boy approaches his learning. The Holy Grail of an assessment is to have boys actively asking ‘where to now?’ after they get their feedback from a task, to help them jump to whatever the next level is, personally, for them.

Interestingly, there is also a substantial body of research that argues students learn better, improve faster, and achieve higher levels of performance if teachers never let them see marks from their tests, exams or assessments. Without the numbers to fixate upon, students focus on what they did, what they didn’t do, and what they need to change for next time – this is the cycle that improves performance in the long run.

I like the stories that the boys’ grades and marks tell us, and how we can use them to unpack how a boy is travelling in specific areas of specific subjects, and how we can use them to help them be better students and perform better. However, while we read and reflect on the boys’ Half Yearly reports we need to remember that to get them there we all need to work to teach them to ask the right questions about what lies behind the numbers, and to help them rewrite their own story.

Mr Trent Driver
Deputy Head of Stanmore (Academic )