In Conversation With… John Davies, St George’s Weybridge

At Alps, we are always keen to hear how schools integrate our tools into their academic processes.

In this edition of “In Conversation With…”, we spoke to John Davies, Assistant Head Academic at St George’s Weybridge, about his long-standing experience using Alps Connect, our powerful tool for performance analysis, to support student progress and academic monitoring.

Both the Junior School and College of St George’s Weybridge have been awarded ‘Excellent’ in all categories by the Independent School Inspectorate, and achieve results far above the national average. The combined efforts and dedication from their students and team across both schools has secured their position within the top UK schools for Value-Added.

Why did St George’s Weybridge Choose Alps?

“The product we used previously, I didn’t find it particularly user-friendly. There was always a delay when we got results, a two-or-three day delay, of actually getting the results into those packages, and I did find it genuinely very difficult sometimes to get the data in.

‘With Alps at A Level, and I’m already finding at GCSE, it is so quick to get the data in, just copying and pasting data, dropping it straight into the Alps software, and within a couple of hours you’ve got everything processed and you can give the Head and the Governors a heads-up pretty quickly.’

How has your experience of using Alps been?

“With Alps, if I had a problem, or I wanted to have some advice with how to use different parts of the Alps software, there was always someone on the phone who seemed to have experience of Education, picked up the phone quickly and did solve the problem.

‘The other thing I found was the Alps did respond very quickly post-COVID to how results had shifted, and were very proactive in changing their software so that we had the option of looking at both national datasets, but also the Alps strategic dataset, and how we could make more reasoned comparisons against other schools, and how their data had also shifted since COVID.’

What have been the benefits of using Alps at KS4 for St George’s Weybridge?

“One of the key reasons why we had moved to use Alps for GCSE was that we can monitor the students’ progress all the way through the courses. I can just copy and paste their results into the software, and I instantly get the monitoring report. I can then use that to direct departments and look at how they can best improve.

‘We are an Independent School that is under a lot of pressure to get good results, and monitoring the students in that way, using the Alps software, is really helpful.”

You can view the full conversation with John here:

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.

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 on 01484 887600 and we will be delighted to speak to you, or you can book a demo with one of our knowledgable team here.