Introduction to Interventions in Arbor

This article explains the concept of interventions in Arbor, which are actions taken by schools to improve student progress and well-being outside of regular lessons. It details how to set up and manage different types of interventions, track student progress, and measure the impact and costs associated with these interventions. The article also provides examples of various interventions that can be implemented within Arbor.

What are interventions?

An intervention is any action that a school takes with a child or group of children outside normal day-to-day lessons to improve student progress, attainment and/or well-being. Interventions are an essential part of the day-to-day running of all schools, regardless of their size, status or age group.

• In some MISs, there's a different area to schedule an 'alternative curriculum' for students who will be out of lessons. You'd then need to set up an Intervention in a separate area to track their progress against their goals.
• In Arbor, this can all be done in one place with timetabling built-in using Interventions. You can manage the students in interventions when they join and leave throughout the year. You can measure the costs of the intervention by each staff member (any staff, not just limited to teachers), and whether it's had an impact by tracking whether the students have met certain outcome criteria.

Please note: Arbor Interventions are available as part of our Perform package. All other Arbor packages won’t have this feature by default. Want to upgrade or find out what package you’re on? Just get in contact with our Partnership Team by emailing customersales@arbor-education.com 

Each intervention should:

• Have an impact that is closely monitored weekly or monthly etc
• Monitor cost needs
• Have a high level of student turnover
• Have specific outcomes
• Target a group of students
• Have outcomes that can be measured

How do interventions work in Arbor?

Setting up and using interventions

There are three types of interventions you can set up:

• Ad Hoc Interventions - these can be used to record when a student is in a different place than their normal lesson. You can see how to set these up here: Ad Hoc Interventions
• Interventions as an Alternative Curriculum - schedule timetable slots for the students to have dedicated time to work towards outcomes that you set. You can see how to set these up here: Setting up an Intervention, editing it and enrolling students
• Interventions to track student outcomes only - set up in the same way as above (without timetabled sessions), these interventions won't take the student out of their regular classes but can be used to track student groups' progress or attendance for example.

Once the interventions are set up, you can add or remove students, and take attendance where you're running an alternative curriculum.

Finally, you can make sure students are achieving their outcomes: Review an Intervention. You can also track provision mapping and intervention costs. 

Intervention examples

Examples of Interventions you can run in Arbor:

• Academic e.g. a regular, scheduled after-school Maths booster, or a reading catch-up session
• Statistic-based e.g escalated attendance interventions for students with high rates of absence
• Behavioural e.g. a six-week anger-management course, or a behaviour support plan
• Pastoral e.g. a one-hour session each week to boost students' self-esteem, a mental health support workshop or SEN cohort interventions
• Ad hoc e.g. one-on-one interventions led by a Teaching Assistant, group work in a different room, or a behavioural time-out
• Monitoring e.g. a group of students are assigned to a staff member for monitoring to get notifications and track their progress on the Homepage.
• Assessment e.g. you can define the outcomes based on a summative assessment (e.g. Students should be above X grade in English to meet the outcome). In the Intervention, you will see that outcome as met or not met based on the grade in the summative marksheet.