Development of this on-line system will enable the EA to centralise, collate, synthesise and analyse a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data already held by EA services, across a number of Directorates to provide a more connected, coherent, strategic support service. The interim solution will create a central interface which will provide principals and the EA with a consolidated, up to date and shared overview of a school’s current status, support interactions, outcome trends and areas for development, allowing more effective and efficient planning for both individual schools and the system as a collective. Such an interface offers enormous strategic potential in terms of EA being able to more readily identify and capitalise on good practice, as well as being able to target earlier and better tailored intervention for schools that need it. Interrogation of the interface will allow for better informed regional policy development and accountability, whilst Principals will also benefit from a much more meaningful school ‘performance dashboard’ against which to plan for and drive their individual school improvement agenda.
It would also allow EA to evaluate the basic system efficacy and subsequently undertake detailed scoping for a more sophisticated database that could be developed as part of EA’s Digital Transformation Programme over the longer term.