1. Input your data and generate targets

Once you’ve input your data you can use Alps to generate Minimum Expected Grades (MEGs). Establishing MEGs in the autumn at the start of a student’s programme is an essential part of the Alps culture. Setting them at the equivalent of the top 25% is aspirational but achievable and is proven to drive up outcomes for students.

2. We crunch your data and provide your analysis

On inputting your data your analysis is available immediately in Connect. You can start using our on-line analysis tools straight away. We’ve been honing our methodology for over 20 years, so it is tried and tested. You can measure value added progress for individual students, subjects, departments and the whole school or college, using robust benchmarks based on the full national dataset.

3. The well-known Alps analysis tools

To help make interpreting analysis simple we’ve developed distinctive, easy to use tools. Together these provide stakeholders with a common language for discussing your students’ performance.

Alps Grading System:
Outcomes are graded from 1-9 to show performance against national benchmarks.

A simple 3-colour Coding System:
RED, BLACK and BLUE show performance against national benchmarks by colour, making the analysis easy to interpret for all.

Alps Thermometers:
These m
ake the grading and colour coding systems instantly understandable. Our thermometers let teachers know at a glance how their class is performing against national benchmarks.

4. Levels of analysis

Alps provides analysis at student, subject/set and whole school or college levels. We provide 4 years’ worth of analysis to allow the identification of trends. Within these levels, via Alps Connect Interactive you can look at data by gender, ethnicity, disadvantage, ability bands and other custom groups.

Student

  • Analyse your entire cohort’s performance in one place
  • Easily identifies students to celebrate or ‘at risk’ in specific subjects or across their curriculum, to allow for appropriate and timely intervention by subject or pastoral staff
  • Easily identifies performance gaps within groups of students; by prior attainment, gender, ethnicity, disadvantage or a custom group relevant to your school or college
  • Spot trends quickly with pre-defined and custom student filters
  • Allows analysis against a school or college’s own target grades as well as the Alps Minimum Expected Grades
  • Includes Fine Grade analysis, which monitoring grades are secure or less secure

Subject/Set

  • View, filter and sort subject performance across each exam type in one place to identify areas of celebration or concern; allowing the development of strategies to share good practice, support and intervention
  • Use ‘How do I’ tools to assess what changes you need to make to achieve high performance against robust national subject benchmarks
  • Use ‘What if’ tools to form strategic plans at subject and teaching set levels
  • Compare performance at teaching set level allowing the development of strategies to share good practice, support and intervention
  • View Alps colours and grades for detailed subsets of students within subjects

School/college

  • Access school and college overall level analysis using familiar Alps indicators; Quality of performance and proportion of ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ teaching
  • Instantly run your latest reports via simple templates
  • Combine report pages across levels, years, monitoring points and student filters
  • Drag and drop, add and remove pages to create and share the Alps report tailored to your exact needs

5. Ask the right questions at the right time

The analysis we provide is simple but incredibly incisive. From this you can start to ask the right questions at the right times, identifying strengths and weaknesses and developing purposeful agendas for improvement.

6. Make smart interventions

Analysis is only the starting point. Once you have asked the questions and fully understand the areas to celebrate or the areas of concern, you can quickly and easily identify at risk students, subjects or teaching sets and make vital interventions to make a decisive difference to students and staff. Conversely, you can identify the areas of strong performance to celebrate and encourage the sharing of best practice with lower performing groups, vital for continuous improvement.

7. Keep improving

Outstanding schools and colleges do not rest on their laurels and are constantly striving to improve. Sharing good practice, eliminating low performance, learning from previous years, embedding the systems and refreshing expectations can all help in the pursuit of excellence. The 4-year analysis trend also helps you plan strategically, so you can achieve long-term improvements in performance.