The school’s comprehensive approach to the monitoring and tracking of young people’s attainment and achievement enables all staff to use and analyse data effectively. As a result of this, interventions are purposeful, timely and driven by evidence.

Widening participation

A system to track the achievements of young people has been introduced. The data that comes from this system helps to identify which young people are not involved in opportunities for achievement. Young people and groups of young people can now be more easily targeted for specific opportunities within school. As a result, young people are developing a wider range of skills and attributes and are contributing to the wider life of the school and community. Almost all young people are also gaining a wide range of recognised and accredited awards such as:

• School of Music
• ‘Right Here, Right Now’ (UNCRC)
• Young STEM Leaders
• Douglas P7 Transition Programme
• Mentors in Violence Prevention
• Mental Health Ambassadors
• Youth Philanthropy Initiative
• Silver Surfers
• Milngavie Community Council
• Intergenerational partnerships
• Duke of Edinburgh
• Saltire

Stakeholder consultation on monitoring and tracking

The school’s approach to the monitoring and tracking of learner progress and attainment was reviewed. Key changes were implemented, including a reduction in the number of tracking periods from five to two, and clear descriptions of the roles and responsibilities of teachers and leaders. A new tracking system for Broad General Education (BGE) pupils in S1–S3 was also introduced.

Shared understanding of progress

S1 to S3

The school’s assessment and moderation calendar is carefully aligned to the monitoring and tracking periods. A key focus of professional learning for staff is to build confidence in effective assessment and moderation practices. BGE ‘Progression Statements’ were developed by the school to help staff to understand and evidence progression within the Curriculum for Excellence attainment levels. As a result, staff are now making more reliable judgements about young people’s progress. All staff use the evidence of young people’s progress to inform the learning conversations they have with them.

S4 to S6

The school ensures that key stakeholders are well informed about young people's progress from entry through the senior school. Progression data is shared with young people, parents/carers and staff to ensure that young people’s subject and course choices are informed by prior attainment. At the start of the school session, subject departments are provided with a detailed overview of young people’s subject choices and how they relate to prior attainment.

Traffic lights are used in this dataset to ensure that targeted and early intervention occurs at the very start of courses. There is an ongoing review of National Qualification progression data and the introduction of a wide range of alternative Scottish Credit and Qualification Framework level courses. This ensures that all young people can progress in curriculum subjects which are linked to their strengths and interests.

Identifying barriers to learning

Pupil Equity Funding has been used to appoint staff to lead projects that relate to the monitoring and tracking of pupil achievement and attainment. The school has successfully accelerated the progress of those young people most affected by poverty. Senior leaders report that the following account for the school’s highly effective approaches to raising attainment for those young people most affected by poverty:

• increased learner pathways in the senior phase, more informed by robust data; and
• the targeted use of staff to support literacy and numeracy.

Senior leaders also ensure that any potential barriers to wider participation are minimised. For example, funds are used to support those in need of financial assistance. As a result, almost all young people benefit from achievement opportunities at no financial cost.

Whole-school data literacy

All staff are involved in the analysis of attainment data to identify gaps. They plan interventions and evaluate the impact of these interventions.

Professional learning focused on data literacy is helping to build capacity across the school in how to use data meaningfully. Through the introduction of regular department attainment meetings, all staff are supported to improve their data-driven decision-making. These meetings are also used to monitor progress of departments, subjects, classes and groups of young people.

Self evaluation questions

This case study should be used with the selected challenge questions to support self-evaluation activities and professional dialogue.

1. How well do we record, analyse and use assessment information to identify development needs for individual learners and specific groups?
2. How effectively do we monitor participation?
3. Do we have a shared understanding of what progression looks like?
4. To what extent do staff have opportunities to develop a shared understanding of progress in learning across levels and into the senior phase?