Measuring progress

Measuring progress requires the collection of data (broadly defined to encompass qualitative and quantitative data on a range of valued outcomes) and the analysis of these data to help with understanding how your school functions, how a group of students learn, and the successes and problems that you are facing. This will help you make decisions on how to prioritise teaching time, where to target additional instruction, and how to adapt the curriculum in line with students’ learning strengths and needs.

Measuring progress enables schools and teachers to identify areas of strength and areas for improvement, and to prioritise actions. At an individual student level, it enables teachers to recognize students who are making good progress and those who might need extra support. It also provides a means for evaluating the impact of different approaches, strategies and teaching practices. It is very difficult to improve without measuring progress.

While simply measuring progress does not in and of itself lead to improvement or acceleration in students’ learning, when data are collected, analysed and utilized effectively, they can support improved teaching and learning. The effective measuring of progress can be limited in education by the validity of measures and measurement processes and the evaluative capacity of educators to effectively utilise data to inform decision making and improvement processes.

• Identify your valued learning outcomesand the holistic achievement of your students
• Carefully consider which data you will collect and utilise, making sure to not privilege one type of data and where possible utilizing valid measures.
• Make sure you dig deeper into the data, to really identify what is going on and what the root issue is.
• See monitoring progress as a collective rather than an individual undertaking.

• What outcomes do I value for my students?
• What different measures can I use to measure a range of valued outcomes?
• How do I analyse and interpret my data so that I can understand what is going on for my students individually, as well as groups of students?
• What are the next steps as a result of my data? What changes could I make to better support my students?