Systems for tracking and monitoring progress are being developed at school, local authority, regional and national levels across Scotland.

Education Scotland, representatives from Association of Directors of Education in Scotland (ADES) and the Scottish Government have worked collaboratively to develop:

1. A set of clear messages on what tracking and monitoring is and its purpose.
2. Principles of effective tracking and monitoring
3. A rapid evidence literature review on the effective use of data for improvement in education.

Outlined below is an exploration of messages for practitioners and local authorities. These include information on what tracking and monitoring is, and its purpose.

Tracking and monitoring

The purpose of tracking and monitoring documentation illustrates the purpose of tracking and monitoring at all levels of the system. This resource can be used to support professional dialogue within your establishment.

The principles of tracking and monitoring

"A robust tracking system together with effective interventions ensures continuous progress for learners across the curriculum" How good is our school fourth edition (HGIOS4)

The principles of effective tracking and monitoring support:

• consistency in the tracking of learner progress
• development of reliable and robust data sets
• improvement priorities within establishments and across a local authority

Literature review

The effective use of data for improvement in education literature review focused on finding out how schools and local authorities effectively use data.

Findings were analysed and have been summarised into 6 main themes:

1. Establishing the purpose and use of data
2. Defining and classifying data
3. Creating effective processes and systems
4. Interpreting and analysing data
5. Developing a data informed culture
6. Using data for improvement

How to use these documents

All three resources will help practitioners, school leaders and local authorities to consider how effective their current systems and processes are. Used together they can inform professional dialogue, support identification of ways to improve tracking and monitoring systems, as well as informing professional learning that is required.

Next Steps

From this review, a professional learning programme is being designed, informed by practitioners, middle leaders and senior leaders. See further resources to support the effective use of data.

Improvement questions

1. How effective are our systems in providing leaders and practitioners with an up-to-date picture of the progress of individuals, groups or classes?
2. How well do we use data from our systems to identify patterns, trends and areas for improvement?
3. How confident are we that analysis of tracking and monitoring data is informing school improvement? 
4. How are we ensuring that high quality professional learning supports data literacy and leads to improvement?
5. How confident are we that our systems and processes are capturing the progress of all children and young people across all aspects of learning?
6. Do we have robust quality assurance processes in place to ensure the quality of the data being gathered?