Live National Benchmarks in the BI Connector

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.

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.

How representative are our benchmarks?

There are over 6800 English schools using Arbor supporting over 2.5 million students. This is over 27% of the schools in England. It includes almost 900 secondaries (26% of secondary schools in England) and over 5200 primaries  over 30% of the primary schools in England).

We want to help schools understand the national picture as it changes day-by-day. Therefore we are starting to provide you with live national benchmarks across all Arbor schools on key metrics. This builds on the attendance averages we have been providing in the MIS for some time. Since we have a significant proportion of the total population of schools this means our averages align closely with DfE national averages.

As can be seen in the table below, the demographic make-up of Arbor’s student population for 2023-2024 is close to the national data published by the DfE as part of their Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics:

Historical data from the DfE and Arbor also closely align. For 2023-2024 the Arbor national average for Secondary attendance is 90.9 while the DfE average was 90.5%. For primaries the Arbor national average was 94.2 while the DfE average was 94.5 (see table below). 

Compared to published DfE attendance data (which was based on 69% of schools in 2023-2024) Arbor’s year-to-date (YTD) aggregated national averages for primary and secondary diverge by less than half a percent. See below the breakdown of Arbor National Averages compared to the DfE averages for the relevant time period. We have used suspension rates from 2022-2023 because these are the most recent published by the DfE.

DfE Attendance Data Source

Please note that the Arbor ‘Present %’ figures above are adjusted to reflect DfE attendance calculations. Specifically, the DfE excludes 15 year olds in the second half of the summer term to account for study leave and related absences and we have similarly adjusted this Arbor metric for comparison purposes. See more about their methodology here.

Additionally, we also provide benchmarks split by student group. These tend to track the DfE published figures. For example, here are some indicative Arbor benchmarks with the corresponding DfE figures. Please note that the 2023-2024 DfE EYFS data is not published yet so we are using last year’s to show comparisons.

DfE EYFS Data Source

To reflect the potential divergences between the Arbor sample and the population, as laid out above, we round our national averages to two significant digits (since we format them as decimals this means that 90.9% attendance would be published as 0.91 on the BI Connector).

Additionally, some of the benchmarks we have published (including ‘trips per student’ and ‘% of students with one or more suspensions’) do not have corresponding published figures from the DfE. We are exploring ways to provide more information to users demonstrating the representativeness of our benchmarks.

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.

How do we calculate student groups?

In order to calculate student groups and provide an Arbor live national average (e.g. the persistent absence rate for SEN students) we include a student in that average calculation if they were identified as SEN at any point in the time period in question.