Driving improvement across MATs at Key Stage 4 and 5

As part of our ongoing commitment to support leaders in MATs, Local Authorities and Groups to drive evidence-informed school improvement, we launched our Group platform, Alps Summit.  

Summit combines all the simple and effective analysis of Connect at a MAT level and provides interactive analysis of examination data and internal assessment data at both the individual school level and at a Trust level. 

Summit currently covers A level, BTEC and Vocational Qualifications and we are delighted to announce the release of Summit at Key Stage 4. 

Alps Director of Education and Product Development, Sue Macgregor, recently hosted a webinar which explored how the Alps value added approach across Summit and Connect can be used to drive improvement across a MAT or Group. Sue demonstrated how Summit provides a powerful and strategic analysis with the ability to dig down into the finite detail at school level.  

We have split the webinar up into bitesize videos below, but if you want would prefer to watch the full on-demand webinar, head over to: https://www.bigmarker.com/alps-education/Alps-Summit-Driving-improvement-across-MATs-at-Key-Stage-4-and-5  

Part 1: The background   

Sue introduces the webinar giving an overview into how Alps Summit and Connect operate together to provide a framework for improvement across a MAT/Group. In Part 1, Sue gives a background on Summit and how we used the invaluable feedback from the MAT and Group Leaders to drive the development of the platform.  

Sue also briefly discussed the principles that form the basis of the functionality. Essentially, our goal is for the analysis to be so easy to use, that insights are accurate, quick and clear, giving senior leaders more time to have timely and valuable conversations with their schools to agree the priorities and interventions required to make a real difference to students. 

Part 2: How does it work?  

Alps Summit is simple and powerful. The schools included in the group Summit analysis will each have their own school level Alps Connect account that links with Summit; allowing each school to upload and have ownership of their own data, whilst sharing that data with their MAT in Summit.  

In Part 2, Sue gives an overview into how the ‘big picture’ provides MATs with key data across an Academic Year. 

Part 3: Alps Connect and Summit – A perfect value-added combination  

Based on the full DfE dataset, the Alps philosophy challenges schools/colleges to be aspirational with students and to strive for the top 25% in terms of progress.  

In Part 3, Sue explores how MATs or Groups can see the overall value–added scores. MAT leaders can drill down into the data to identify patterns across each of their schools and colleges enabling the identification of strengths and weaknesses via the Summit platform.   

Part 4: An Introduction to Connect  

If you haven’t used Alps before, Part 4  provides useful context of Connect before Sue gives a demonstration of the features and functionality of Summit.  

Alps Connect is the school level platform that gives schools in-depth value-added analysis across the whole cohort and at subject level. All indicators are compared against benchmarks created from the DfE national dataset.

In this section, Sue introduces our signature Alps Thermometer and explores how to analyse contextual information for different groups of students, e.g. disadvantaged, EAL and, gender before diving into individual student level analysis. Sue demonstrates how the Connect data feeds through to create the Summit analysis tables which then supports a MAT’s strategic improvement planning. 

Don’t just take our word for it…   

MATs and Groups are already using Summit effectively and are providing positive feedback.  

Anthem Trust serves over 8,000 children and young people in 16 schools across the East Midlands, London and Thames Valley.  Jane Coley, Education Director at Anthem, who has been using Summit at KS5, shares her experiences of using Summit and their plans to roll out at Key Stage 4:   

See it for yourself…   

If you have any questions about Summit and how it can drive improvement in your MAT, book a demo here.

About Sue: Sue joined the Alps team in 2016, having worked as Deputy Head at Windsor Girls’ School. As a Deputy, Sue used Alps extensively to raise standards of attainment across the sixth form, achieving a Ofsted Outstanding grade and now uses this experience to deliver training to teachers and school leaders. Sue finds helping staff get the most out of their Alps analysis in order to drive aspiration in their students as one of the most enjoyable parts of her role.