Steve Preston, Author at Mime

Analysis, Insight Reports & Infographics School Improvement

Year 1 Phonics Check – How important is reaching the 32 point threshold?

We have just supported a number of schools in analysing the outcomes of the recent, controversial, Year 1 Phonics Check. The Phonics Check measures a 5 or 6 year olds’ reading level in terms of their ability to “decode phonics” (including fake words such as yop and groiks). The outcomes for schools will not be publically available, and so schools will not be directly held to account for their pupil’s achievement in the check; however, what can our analysis tell us about how important teachers consider their pupil’s scores? Well, the expected level for the check is 32 points (out…

Steve PrestonJuly 23, 2012

SEND & Inclusion

LLDD Forecasting Model Workshops

This Wednesday, along with Yolande Burgess and Glyn Parry of London Councils, we ran a series of four well attended workshops for London Local Authorities to learn more about our Post-16 Forecasting Model for Learners with Learning Difficulties and Disabilities (LLDD). Yolande kicked off the sessions by letting us all know that the model has already been used by a number of LAs as part of their Demographic Growth Capital Fund (DGCF) bids which helped bring in £11 million of additional funding into London. The workshops demonstrated some key visualisations from the model (which predicts an increase in demand from…

Steve PrestonJuly 19, 2012

Analysis, Insight Reports & Infographics Local & Regional Government

Visualising the 2011 Education Act

While there are lots of interesting ways of visualising numeric data, traditionally it has been more challenging to neatly summarise text. However, with the wonders of modern technology we are now able to depict long, (and potentially rather dry) documents using Word Clouds. So, we decided to take a look at the 2011 Education Act to pull out some key messages. Once we had removed the legalese (such as the 746 uses of the word subsection, and 313 uses of the word substitute) the picture above is what we found… So, what does this tell us? Well, firstly we can see…

Steve PrestonApril 25, 2012

Analysis, Insight Reports & Infographics School Improvement

Why does being born in the Autumn make you more likely to be gifted or talented?

Most of us working in education are aware of the impact that a child’s term of birth has on their academic development, particularly in primary schools (in Year 1, the oldest child in the year has experienced 20% more development than the youngest). However, why does that extend to the identification of gifts or talents, which should surely be independent of age? Historically, schools were required to inform the DfE about the individuals they had identified as Gifted and Talented (G&T). Using this data, as part of our work for G&T regional partnerships, we identified that a primary school child…

Steve PrestonJanuary 16, 2012