Teachers asked to compile data for SSE.

gaeilgebeo · 05-09-2014 7:52pm #1

During our CP meeting yesterday, our new DP handed each department pages of paperwork for us to use as past of SSE.
We are being asked to compile a huge amount of data.
We are asked to go back over the last few years of exam results, compare them to the national average, present the figures, set out our new targets and compare our new targets to our previous JC and LC results.

There is a huge amount of work involved in this (we are not being allocated any of our CP hours to do it).

Are other teachers taking on this paperwork?
Are teachers supposed to do this?
The DP has all the data. Is this not an administration job?
I am curious to know what other schools are doing.

spurious · 05-09-2014 7:56pm

Our DP used to do that job.

Pwpane · 05-09-2014 8:20pm

Happening here too. Our D P also new.

gaeilgebeo · 05-09-2014 8:25pm

I am head of dept and very reluctant to take this on.
It is a huge amount of paperwork.

Pwpane · 05-09-2014 8:31pm

School info will be ready to publish for openness, transparency and accountability?

gaeilgebeo · 05-09-2014 8:36pm

Pwpane wrote: »

School info will be ready to publish for openness, transparency and accountability?

I have no issue with that but I do wonder if this work is being off-loaded on teachers?
We have enough to do with our own subject planning and schemes.

Pwpane · 05-09-2014 8:48pm

I would have an issue with it. Those are students' results, not the school's results.

If part of SSE, that is specifically what C P hours are for.

You could ask the secretary to do it for you as he or she would have all that info to hand.

Failing that, just do it for the last year and say you'll build it up.

rainbowtrout · 05-09-2014 9:00pm

We were asked to do that before the end of last summer, for the results for the last 5 years. We were told that it was urgent. I ended up with the stats for two subjects. They are still thrown on the sideboard at home, I haven't had time to look at them and no one has come near me about them since. There are not enough hours in the day to get all of this paperwork done.

fall · 05-09-2014 9:38pm

We did it in our school. It's actually much quicker than it sounds. The pdst has compiled all the national averages and grades and created an excel sheet. You literally input your results eg 6 beside the a1 grade etc and then the programme generates everything else. You get bar charts and pie charts at the end and you can print those for your department folder. It took me twenty minutes to do about four years.

fall · 05-09-2014 9:42pm

http://www.pdst.ie/sse/pp/resources/scanalysis
This is the link. I was only happy to do it because this tool existed. I would not have trawled through results or spent hours on it. It's an interesting thing to look at even if you just do one year. ( or maybe that's just my nerdy opinion :-))

wingnut · 05-09-2014 10:21pm

There is a guy who has written a software to automate this. You put your school results and it prints reports by subject:

http://evello.ie/home.aspx

TheDriver · 05-09-2014 11:01pm

I do it in my places, once u get hang of it its fast enough. Wouldn't ask my teachers to do it though.....

implausible · 05-09-2014 11:24pm

We've been doing this for years - each dept looks at the results and compares to the national average and it goes in the dept. planning 'box'. Mind you, we are a DEIS school.

fall · 06-09-2014 8:55am

Yes we are Deis and we did it in subject department meetings during Croke park hours.

solerina · 06-09-2014 4:08pm

We had a WSE about 4 years ago and we were all asked to do this for our various departments...It actually doesn't take very long and is easy to do once a year to keep the file up to date.

mirrorwall14 · 06-09-2014 5:06pm

The paperwork is mounting up. I'm a one teacher department with a second subject. I have to attend all the meetings in the other subject meaning that my folder/plans for all five year groups have to be done by myself, in my own time on top of the plans for the other subject (although we do common plans now so its not as bad).

I came back to school a week early to update the folder and all the plans and print them this year. At our Staff meeting the following week the format changed again and literacy/numeracy now have to be built into the plan. On top of that they've decided to standardise the headings in the department folders and even though I used the PDST template to create the folder there are multiple changes to be made. Now I'm back at school trying to do the folder again in my spare time.

The numeracy tests were run in the first week back; they took four plus hours to correct 30 students and the data then had to be entered into the spreadsheet which was poorly laid out in comparison to the questions (template was provided to the school, we will be amending for next year) and took more time. The poor teacher who got strong armed into being the numeracy coordinator spent hours then analysing the data.

The time created by all of the initiatives that have been rolled out in the past few years really does reduce the planning time available, or at the very least, the energy and attention to detail you have for planning

paddybarry · 06-09-2014 5:09pm

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

The paperwork is mounting up. I'm a one teacher department with a second subject. I have to attend all the meetings in the other subject meaning that my folder/plans for all five year groups have to be done by myself, in my own time on top of the plans for the other subject (although we do common plans now so its not as bad).

I came back to school a week early to update the folder and all the plans and print them this year. At our Staff meeting the following week the format changed again and literacy/numeracy now have to be built into the plan. On top of that they've decided to standardise the headings in the department folders and even though I used the PDST template to create the folder there are multiple changes to be made. Now I'm back at school trying to do the folder again in my spare time.

The numeracy tests were run in the first week back; they took four plus hours to correct 30 students and the data then had to be entered into the spreadsheet which was poorly laid out in comparison to the questions (template was provided to the school, we will be amending for next year) and took more time. The poor teacher who got strong armed into being the numeracy coordinator spent hours then analysing the data.

The time created by all of the initiatives that have been rolled out in the past few years really does reduce the planning time available, or at the very least, the energy and attention to detail you have for planning

It reduces the energy and attention to classroom teaching. Mores the pity.

Wicklowleaid · 06-09-2014 9:59pm

Gaeilgebeo we have also been doing this for about 4 years now. A suggestion that may help your work load is if different people in the department do it on a rotation or take a subject each if as is the case with us in science has so many strands.

losullivan · 06-09-2014 10:10pm

I would like to know who actually benefits from the analysis of cold results. How do you accurately compare individuals with special needs to the national average? What about the students who don't speak English as their first language or the ones who come from dysfunctional homes? A pie chart outlining the impact savage cuts have had on our students would probably be more useful.

gaiscioch · 06-09-2014 10:13pm

We did it in CP hours also in the last school year. The DP gave us the data and we just filled it into an Excel sheet and emailed it back to the school secretary. I filled in the LC and JC results for both my subjects for the past five years. It took an hour or so.

evolving_doors · 06-09-2014 10:50pm

It's part of govt. commitment to publish individual school results.... doc. produced (by who is what I want to know??) when the new minister was appointed...

See document here HERE

."We will publish, for the information of parents, a summary of the performance of all schools." (pg4)

Also see today's Indo. govt. mouthpiece. "Teachers and Principals facing regular reviews of performance" Here

[...]. The focus of the appraisals would be to foster improvement in standards, rather than hard accountability of teachers.

The briefing document refers to evidence from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which "suggests that appraisal systems for teachers and principals can play a beneficial role in strengthening teaching and learning in schools". The OECD sees effective teacher evaluation as key to delivering a quality education system.

Such appraisals, which are in place in other parts of the public service, would be seen as part of a wider system of evaluation and assessment that includes school inspections, school self-evaluation, student performance #and national research. [...]
{#my bold and underline}

Seems to be a fait accompli as regards teachers pay/promotion linked to performance. Interesting that this was all done and dusted and handed to the minister without much consultation with teachers.

Yet again, we can see how this ties in with Jc self assessment of students as the grades will be held over our heads if we want our next increment.

Teachers asked to compile data for SSE.

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