Primary education
How are the groups doing against the school standard, per year group and per subject area? Which group plans work? At most primary schools the internal support coordinator answers those questions with printouts from ParnasSys or ESIS and an Excel file of their own. TRIPS brings those data together, so that the time goes not into calculating but into the question why the results are what they are. That helps in the accountability to the school board and the Inspectorate, and above all in the conversation with colleagues and parents.
How the implementation goes
Implementing TRIPS follows the same five steps at every school. What goes into it differs per school: your own source systems, your own school standards and your own questions. Allow about two years before the whole school works with data. From two weeks after the data inventory you can already log in and look at the first data.
From the school it takes a small data team that checks the data and learns to work with TRIPS, and someone who arranges access to the source systems. Below you can read what each step involves and what it means for a primary school.
1. Data inventory: what you already record
We start with a conversation of about two hours at the school. In it we map out together which data the school already records, in which systems and who works with them. We also discuss which questions you want to answer with those data and which agreements are still missing for that.
At a primary school it is usually about the test results and the pupil monitoring system in ParnasSys or ESIS, the group plans, the school standards per year group and the data on absence and social safety. The internal support coordinator is at this conversation. They know which standards the school uses, when a pupil scores ‘at level’ and which overviews are still kept in Excel.
After this conversation you know which questions you can already answer with data, where data are missing and what the school still has to arrange itself. That overview is also useful if you do not go on with TRIPS.
It is a pleasure to adjust course with TRIPS
2. Which systems we connect
After the data inventory we know which data are needed. Our developers connect the school’s source systems to your own TRIPS environment. That takes about two to three months, depending on the number of systems and how quickly the supplier gives access. From two weeks after the data inventory you can log in and look at the first data; the rest follows as soon as a connection is ready.
Source systems in primary education we connect to: ParnasSys, ESIS, Zien!, SCOL, SWIS and Edumaps. An Excel file with your own school standards per year group or a record of your own, for example of the group plans, can be added too.
Data make our teachers more confident
3. Delivery: the first visualisations
At the delivery the standard visualisations are ready. Together with the school’s data team we go through the data. Is everything right? Does the team recognise the figures? Usually it then turns out that certain data need cleaning up or completing: missing pupil data, or a proliferation of absence reasons. That clean-up is the school’s work and is part of the process.
Not all colleagues start working with TRIPS Explore straight away, the part in which the data are shown in charts. The data team, at a primary school often the principal, the internal support coordinator and a teacher, first gets workshops to work with it.
How many pupils per group score at or above the school standard? Which group deviates from the same year group last year, and since which test round? How does absence compare per group? Together with the data team we turn such questions into analysis questions: questions that can be answered with data.
For example: ‘What percentage of pupils in group 5 reaches the school standard for reading comprehension, per test round?’ With a question like that we help to make the fitting visualisation.
4. Start programme and hands-on training
After the delivery a start programme of three months begins. In that time the school cleans up the data and practises with what is there. That is how the data team discovers what is possible and which questions are still open.
In the hands-on training the data team learns to build visualisations itself: what each button does, how you filter and which chart fits which question. After that the data team can answer questions in TRIPS on its own. For a primary school that is, for example, the question whether a new maths method in groups 4 and 5 makes the difference you expected.
5. Evaluation: what goes well and what not yet
Halfway through the start programme, after six weeks, the TRIPS coach discusses with the data team how it is going. What works already, what not yet, and which adjustments to the TRIPS environment are needed? Then the team works for another six weeks. At the end of the three months there is a final evaluation. Then you decide together how to go on: more users, an extra module, or first carrying on as it is.
From here the school works with the data itself; the coach remains available. At a primary school the internal support coordinator is often the pivot: they bring the visualisations into the group review, so that the teacher sees for themselves how the group is doing.
In conversation with the teacher
With TRIPS Guide you hold the development conversations with teachers based on what is in Explore. The teacher indicates what they want to work on, for example the maths teaching in their own group. Together with the internal support coordinator or the principal, the teacher looks at what the group results and the feedback from colleagues show. The teacher remains the owner of their own file; the data are an aid in the conversation, not the verdict.
Asking questions at the moment it matters
With TRIPS Quest you send out short questionnaires to pupils, parents and colleagues: after a new method, with a new playground policy or after a study day. That way you do not have to wait for the annual satisfaction survey. The results are shown in Explore next to the test results and absence, so that you see where the team is strong and where development is possible.
Explore is always the first step. After the final evaluation you decide whether and when Guide and Quest are added.
Introductory call, no obligation
Would you like to know what this looks like at your primary school? In a video call of about half an hour we show TRIPS and discuss which systems and school standards your school has and what the programme asks of you.