Improving International Baccalaureate Outcomes: Effective evaluation of student examination results

Across schools and colleges in the UK and oversees, colleagues will be receiving their International Baccalaureate examination results for the May 2025 series.

This is an incredibly busy period where, alongside the distribution of examination results, staff will be expected to offer support and guidance to students regarding their next steps and deal with queries and appeals.

In addition, colleagues will also, crucially, be involved in the process of evaluating student outcomes and identifying key areas for development at both subject and cohort level, as part of their drive for improvement. This blog aims to provide some helpful tips and guidance to support this evaluation process.

Developing data fluency

From my point of view, a key measure of successful evaluation within a school or college is when colleagues at all levels (classroom, subject and cohort) are involved in the evaluation process.

To do this, all need a well-developed understanding of the data you are using and an understanding of the different between attainment and progress data. Without this, colleagues will not be able to quickly identify key areas for development.

It will also be important to ensure that all relevant staff have access to the relevant data, in a format that enables them to get meaningful insights from their data quickly.

Attainment or Progress?

When evaluating student outcomes, examination results can be viewed through the lenses of both attainment and progress. Both have their place. Attainment data provides an excellent measure of the standards achieved, and the IB insights digital tool provides excellent interactive, visual presentations of assessment performance data, including the ability to analyse data on student performance and teacher predictions across subjects and student subgroups, and also at the question item level.

However, value-added/progress measures based on an individual students’ starting point can provide school leaders with a more nuanced understanding of the impact of the education provided, and the progress is made by different groups of students across the curriculum.

In the recently released ISI inspection framework their explicit reference in ‘Teaching and Learning Assessment’ section that leaders must plan to ensure that learners ‘make good progress according to their ability’ and that a framework is in place to evaluate students’ performance which refers to ‘national norms’. In this context it is important to note that Alps is one of the few data analysis providers that has access to the full DfE national data sets and can enable leaders to evaluate progress across individual subject areas against standardised national benchmarks.

Asking the right questions at the right time

Key to effective evaluation is asking the right questions. Some key questions to consider when evaluating student outcomes include:

• Are students making expected progress in all subjects and at all levels?
• Are different groups of students making the equivalent levels of progress? e.g. students with EAL or SEND
• Are students from different prior attainment groups making expected progress?
• Were outcomes consistent across different teaching sets?
• How accurate were predicted student outcomes compared to the actual results?

Summary: Improving International Baccalaureate Outcomes

Effective evaluation of student IB examination results is an important part of any school or college’s self-reflection for improvement. The key is that this data is presented to colleagues in a way that is quick and easy to understand, that the data is analysed within a robust framework and that colleagues are able to take meaningful actions based on their evaluations.

By doing this, successful, top performing schools and colleges can ask the right questions at the right time, to make strategic changes that make a real positive difference to outcomes going forwards. Alps analysis alongside the IB insight tool gives this to you, and we are delighted to have supported colleges, through the excellent use of data, to achieve great success stories.

End Note from Alps

We currently work with over 1,200 schools and colleges and 95 Groups and MATs in the UK and internationally, offering our high-quality analysis at both KS4 and KS5 based on DfE datasets.

If you do not use Alps, but are interested in how Alps could support you to improve your outcomes, do not hesitate to contact one of our friendly team at [email protected]. You can also call us 01484 887600 and we will be delighted to speak to you, or you can book a demo with one of our knowledgeable team here.

About the author: Dr Jevon Hirst, Alps Training Director

Jevon has over 20 years’ experience working in education. Prior to joining Alps in 2020, Jevon has worked in a number of senior leadership roles within schools, with responsibilities for teaching, learning, curriculum, strategic planning, self-evaluation and student achievement. Central to these roles, has been the intelligent use of data to inform school improvement and maximise outcomes for students.