The article discusses the introduction of live national benchmarks in the BI Connector for Arbor schools, providing real-time averages on key metrics such as attendance and suspensions. These benchmarks allow school leaders to compare their metrics against national averages and percentiles, enhancing their understanding of the educational landscape. The benchmarks are continuously updated and categorised by school phase and student demographics for more precise comparisons.
We want to help schools understand the national education picture as it changes day by day. Therefore we are building live national averages across all Arbor schools on key metrics. This builds on the attendance averages we have been providing in the MIS for some time. We have a significant proportion of the total population of schools in England and therefore our national averages provide a representative picture for school leaders.
Using the Benchmarks
We will be releasing new benchmarks continuously to our BI Connector, and also adding them to the analytics features in the MIS. All our BI Connector datasets, including all live national benchmarks, will be detailed in this catalogue.
| Metric | Definition |
| Whole school roll cal attendance percentage | Proportion of possible attendance sessions which are present. It is the same metric as 'Whole School Attendance' in the MIS. |
| Roll Call Persistent Absentees Percentage | Proportion of students who are persistent absentees. A persistent absentee is defined as a student who has 10% or more absence. It is the same metric as 'Persistent Absentees' on the MIS homepage. |
| Suspensions Per 100 Students | This is the number of suspensions divided by the number of students and then multiplied by 100. It is the same as the DfE definition. |
| Permanent Exclusions Per 100 Students | This is the number of permanent exclusions divided by the umber of students and then multiplied by 100. It is the same as the DfE definition. |
| Percentage of students with one or more suspensions. | This is the proportions with 1 or more suspensions. |
| Number of trips per student | This is the number of trips divided by the number of students. |
The following benchmark types are included for each metric:
- National Average - enables you to compare your school's metric to the average for other Arbor schools.
- National Percentile - shows how your metrics compare to those of other schools. For example, if your school is in the 90th percentile for attendance, your attendance is higher than 90% of other Arbor schools.
- Your Average - This your school average for the metric.
- Your Percentile - This is your school percentile for the metric (e.g. if you are 91 then your school has a higher average than 91% of schools)
Additionally, we have split metrics by phase and student demographics to enable you to compare your school metrics with the national averages for specific student groups. Please note that we recommend that you only compare student groups to the national average when you have a high enough sample of students in a particular group in your school. If your sample of students in a particular student group is low then the average may be overly impacted by one or two students (and therefore it would be misleading to compare to the national average for that student group).
How are the benchmarks calculated?
The benchmarks are calculated based on the total number of Arbor schools for the relevant phase or student group. As of 3rd July 2024 there are over 6,707 English schools using Arbor, supporting over 2.5 million students. this is 27.4% of the 24,453 schools in England. It includes 896 secondaries (26% of the 3,452 secondary schools in England) and 5,345 primaries (30.3% of the 16764 primary schools in England). Please note that because these figures are calculated using Arbor schools, they may vary slightly from the DfE national attendance statistics that consider all English schools.
FAQ
How can I use the benchmarks in the BI Connector?
The benchmarks are located under ARBOR_BI_CONNECTOR_PRODUCTION/ ARBOR_MIS_ENGLAND_LIVE_BENCHMARKS
Do you round the benchmarks?
Benchmarks are rounded to 2 decimal places. Sample sizes are rounded to the nearest 10.
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