This article outlines the various built-in summative assessment analysis options available in Arbor for primary schools. It details how to analyze student attainment and progress through different views, including charts and tables, and provides guidance on filtering data by demographics, assessment periods, and specific student groups. The article emphasizes the importance of identifying students needing support and tracking progress over time, as well as comparing performance across different subjects and demographics.
There's a whole host of analysis you can do using Arbor’s assessment analysis pages in Students > Assessment > Summative Tracking > Analysis. We offer a wide range of options to group and present assessment data you've input that you can use to explore attainment and progress in individual and combined subjects for pupils, year groups, demographic groups and the whole school.
Watch the video, and click the + symbols to see how you can use each page!
On all of the pages, you can:
- Use the filters to select past assessment periods or reporting dates
- Select specific student groups or classes to focus your analysis on
- Click on data points to take further actions such as adding struggling students into an intervention group
Analysing Assessment Attainment Over Time
Attainment over Time allows you to see the percentage of students currently working at a specific grade for one assessment. You can view the distribution for each assessment period (e.g. termly) and compare the spread of grades for different year groups.
- The students included in your analysis on this page are the students that were enrolled on the date selected on your Marksheet page.
- Marks left blank on the marksheet or filled with Not required marks are not included in the analysis.
In the filters, you can select the student group, assessment and which grade set to use. The Students in field and Grade Set will usually populate with the correct values once you select the assessment, or you can change this to show the display grade set instead.
Choose whether to display total numbers and percentages or student names. Click the filters at the top of the page, and tick or untick the Display student names box. You can also select to display baselines using the filters.
Use the Chart view to see a visual representation of student data.
Drill down further in the chart by clicking a grade in the distribution. In the slide over, you can add students to an intervention or complete other actions.
The table provides a breakdown of the students at each grade for each assessment period if you select Display student names? in the filters.
Red denotes working below target, white is at target and green is above target.
If you don't tick this box, the table will show what percentage of the students are working at each grade for each assessment period.
You can choose to group students by demographic, in order to compare grades. This means the table will display a breakdown of what grades have been achieved for each group of students over time.
See which students make up a group achieving a certain grade by clicking on the box.
A slide over will appear, listing the students in that group. You can then take additional actions such as adding the students to an intervention by ticking the boxes next to their names and clicking the Bulk action button.
Click the student name to navigate to Assessment section of their Student Profile.
Track a single subject for any group of pupils, term by term, as a graph or a table displaying statistics or pupil names. Areas of concern can be identified:
- individual pupils who may need support,
- teachers who may need further training to address specific areas of subject knowledge
- whole school issues
For example, you could use this page to check students are progressing through grades as a group. Here you can see the number of students achieving the lowest grade doesn't seem to be changing.
If you click each group you can see which students make up this part of the distribution.
Now you know there are students who are not making progress you can take further actions. You can add them to an intervention straight from this page, or have a conversation with the year 1 teacher to see how these students can be better supported.
See where students are working against their Attainment Expectations
The Attainment Expectation pages allow schools to see the percentage of children who are below, at or above their attainment expectations e.g. their end of year target at a certain point in time or across multiple assessment periods. Please note: You must have set targets for this page to work.
- The students included in your analysis on these pages are the students that were enrolled at any point between the start date of the first selected assessment period and the end date of the last selected assessment period.
- Marks left blank on the marksheet or filled with Not required marks are not included in the analysis.
Clicking into the filter bar lets you select the assessments to display and how to group your students.
In the example, I have chosen to see an assessment by demographic.
See what percentage of your students are working below, at or above their targets for all assessments selected in the Overview section of the table. Just scroll to the right of the table.
You can see what percentage of students and how many students are working above, at and below their targets for each assessment period.
When you hover your mouse pointer above any of the data points, a tooltip will pop up with information relating to the cohort, assessment and number/percentage of students.
You can click to access more information. Click the student name to navigate to Assessment section of their Student Profile.
On the Over Time page you can see where students are working (below, at or above) in relation to their targets e.g. their end of year target, over time in a graphical format. This will pick up any students who meet the rule in all selected assessments.
Clicking into the filter bar lets you select the assessments to display and how to group your students.
In the example, I have chosen to see the assessment by the Pupil Premium demographic. You can see if certain groups are consistently performing worse, and you can then take actions to give them extra support such as enrolling them into an intervention.
Hover over a point to get more information.
You can also complete bulk actions such as adding students straight to an intervention group by clicking the dot and selecting the students.
See the GAP between your key demographics and their inverse, then take action to decrease this gap. Just click into the filters at the top of the page, and select Demographic vs Inverse vs Gap in the Group By field, then click Save Changes.
You can then see the gap between these demographics and their inverse:
- Sex Gap
- Compulsory School Age (5 - 15) Gap
- EAL Gap
- Gifted Gap
- Gifted + Talented Gap
- Mobile (Y5 & Y6) Gap
- Out Of Age Group Cohort Gap
- SEN Gap
- Talented Gap
- Disadvantaged Gap
- Ever 6 FSM Gap
- FSM Gap
- Pupil Premium Gap
- Looked After (In Care) Gap
Here's what the numbers mean:
- Any fields showing 0% means no students in that demographic group are working at that Attainment Expectation.
- Any fields showing N/A means that there are no students in that demographic group for the assessments selected.
- A positive gap means that a higher percentage of the demographic is achieving this Attainment Expectation, whereas a negative Gap means that a higher percentage of the inverse demographic is achieving this Attainment Expectation.
You would want all your demographics to have the same spread of data. If they're not, you may want to provide extra support for students in the form of interventions. Just click the group of students to take further action.
Combined figures are shown at the far right of the table, and you can choose in the filters to display data by Year Group and demographics (such as Pupil Premium) or individual student.
Combined figures are shown at the far right of the table, and you can choose in the filters to display data by Year Group and demographics (such as Pupil Premium) or individual student.
You can see the percentage of students working below their targets and identifying room for improvement for certain groups of students.
Teachers can use the Attainment Expectations page grouped by demographics and identifying why specific pupils have performed better than expected or fallen behind in progress or attainment.
Analysing Grade Distributions of my Assessments (including Strands)
The grade distribution tool in Students > Assessments > Summative Tracking > Analysis > Grade Distribution lets you view the spread of student grades for Summative, Ad Hoc and Standardised Assessments.
First displaying a summary for each assessment period, you can then dig down into each strand of an assessment (for a summative assessment with strands). You can then perform actions for groups of students you have identified, such as emailing or adding to an intervention etc. This is a really useful page for comparisons across classes and across different assessments for the same assessment period.
- The students included in your analysis on this page are the students that were enrolled at any point during the assessment period selected. If no assessment period is selected, it will be students who were enrolled during the academic year selected.
- Marks left blank on the marksheet or filled with Not required marks are included in the analysis in the No Mark section.
The filters at the top of the page allow you to choose which students and assessments to display. You can select multiple assessments to compare grade distributions and show baselines.
The Students in field and Grade Set will usually populate with the correct values once you select the assessment, or you can change this to show the display grade set instead.
Click Save Changes to view the distributions.
As with other Arbor assessment analysis tools, you can identify groups of students based on the information in the chart. To do this, click the group you would like to analyse.
In the slide over, you will see a list of the students achieving this grade. Select one or more students using the checkbox column to the left of the table and perform a number of actions.
By clicking on the Table View tab, you can view a table of your statistics.
Using the filters you can choose to display student names in the table view so you can see which student is in each group.
The screenshot below shows the academic year view of a summative assessment with five strands.
By default, the chart will display the distribution of grades for your selected assessment by assessment period.
If the summative assessment has strands, you can click on an assessment period in the chart (Indicated with the orange 3 in the screenshot above) and drill down to see the grade distribution by strand in a given assessment period. The screenshot below shows the grade distribution by strand for the ‘Spring 2’ assessment period.
This chart title will always display which assessment periods have been included in a chart. This is especially useful if you want to see the grade distribution by strand and need a reminder of which assessment period you are viewing.
Each bar in the chart represents the grades for a given assessment period. For summative assessments with strands, you can click the bar to see the grade distribution by strand.
This additional filter layer enables you to focus on a particular grade/mark when viewing a grade distribution chart. It is most useful when analysing a summative assessment that contains a wide range of grades/marks. Just click the grade to analyse the chart further.
The Grade Distribution page will show multiple subjects for chosen pupil groups. This is particularly useful for discussions with teachers about attainment and progress across subject areas.
Leaders with non-subject specific responsibilities can filter to show e.g. SEN pupils only or those who are SEN and Looked After Pupils.
You'll want all your students to be working at or above the expected standard for their year group. For example, here I'm looking at my EYFS assessments and can see that there are students working below 8-20(S) in the Self-confidence and self-awareness assessment, whereas all students are doing well in the other assessments.
Now you know that students are not doing quite as well in one area of the curriculum, you can take further actions by clicking on the group of students. You can add them to an intervention straight from this page, or have a conversation with the teacher to see if more lessons developing this area could be taught.
Using the Transition Matrix
You can find our Transition Matrix by going to Students > Assessments > Summative Tracking > Analysis > Transition Matrix.
- The students included in your analysis on this page are the students that were enrolled at any point during the academic year selected.
- Marks left blank on the marksheet or filled with Not required marks are included in the analysis in the No Mark section.
Our Transition Matrix allows you to compare:
- Student's starting points in an assessment to their current grades
- Student's starting points in one assessment to their current grades in another assessment
- Student's starting points in two different assessments
- Student's current grades in two different assessments
You can choose the assessment you would like to appear on each axis including the assessment period you would like to view the assessment for by clicking the filters at the top of the page.
You can view DfE standardised (e.g. the Year 6 SATS Level), summative or ad hoc assessments.
You can see students in each group by ticking the Display student names box in the filters.
You can find out more information on the groups of students that make up each statistic by clicking on the box. You can then take additional actions such as adding the students to an intervention.
Click the student name to navigate to Assessment section of their Student Profile.
For example, I want to make sure all my students have made a good amount of progress this year from their autumn to their summer assessment.
I'm going to click the students who have not made any progress.
I can ask their teachers if they know of any reasons why they might not have made any progress, or I can email Anna's guardians directly to ask if there was a reason why she might have done badly right from this page!
I'd also like to check whether my class is achieving about the same grades as another class. I'm going to select the two assessments in the filters and set the assessment periods as the same.
Analysing Assessments using the Statistics page
The Statistics page shows a table of students' average grades including average baseline, average working at grade and average target. It can also be used to find a breakdown of raw progress points made by certain groups from their baselines, and the percentage of students working below, at or above their targets.
- The students included in your analysis on this page are the students that were enrolled on the date selected in the filter.
- Marks left blank on the marksheet or filled with Not required marks are not included in the analysis.
Top Tip: This page has a unique code in the URL, so you can bookmark the filter settings you need, and share your analysis settings with others without needing to redo the filters.
Use the filters at the top of the page to select the student groups to compare or choose which attainment expectations to show. Choose your Date, student group, Grade set, Level type and which assessments to analyse. The Students in field and Grade Set will usually populate with the correct values once you select the assessment, or you can change this to show the display grade set instead.
Then you can choose to group students by different demographics or group and choose the columns to display.
The table can be exported in PDF or Excel format by clicking the Download button.
A range of comparative groups can be displayed to show attainment and progress on one chart. As with all tables, you can click the headers to sort students by most or least progress.
If you are using a flat scale:
- Students who make 0 points of progress are working at the expected level.
- If their progress from baseline is positive, they have achieved a higher level than their target.
- If their progress from baseline is negative, they have not remained on target.
If you are using a rising scale:
- Students who make 0 points of progress have remained at their current grade.
- If their progress from baseline is positive, they have improved their grade.
- If their progress from baseline is negative, their grade is lower than the baseline.
For example, if you want to see whether my male students are making as much progress as my female students, you can group by demographics.
The page can also be used to show progress statistics for a range of student groups and their inverse from their baselines. Just use the filters to select the student groups to compare.
Using this page, you could identify that the average mark for one class is much lower than the others, or that pupil premium children are making less progress than non-pupil premium students in maths.
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