Insight 101: Choosing and Comparing Pupils
Updated 5 years ago
A benefit of using a database based system like Insight over something like a spreadsheet is having more flexibility over what information you store about your pupils, and how you can view and group pupils based on that information.
Got an Ofsted inspector who wants to know how your Year 6 summer-born boys with SEN are performing compared to those with no SEN? That data might be a headache to extract from spreadsheets, but takes just a few clicks in Insight:
Most contextual and key information about your pupils will be imported into Insight from SIMS (or whichever MIS you use) when you use the Update Pupils process.
Insight's Interventions and Groups functionality also lets you 'tag' pupils into any custom groups your school needs. This lets you record any interventions you're running in your school, as well as bespoke groups such as subject sets.
Introducing Filters and Groups
Insight's simple filtering and grouping approach then makes it easy to look at different sets of pupils and/or compare them in various ways. It's the same method throughout the system, whether you're choosing which pupils to enter data for or which pupils to analyse via one of the cohort reports, so it's quick to pick up.
Use Filters to specify and narrow down the group you're looking at
You can Filter Pupils to tell Insight which children you want to see. That might be the whole school, all your SEN pupils, just your class or a more specific subset.
Use Groups to break down the group you're looking at into subsets
Some reports also let you Group Pupils, so you can make comparisons between the children you're looking at. If you're looking at your class, you might group by gender to compare your boys and girls, or by an intervention you're running to see its impact.
Further Reading
You can find more detailed guidance on using Filters and Groups throughout these help guides:
- For a step-by-step walkthrough with examples, see Getting Started with Filters and Groups
- For details on how to use specific filters and groups, visit the Filters and Groups category
- For details on how to add your own Interventions and Groups, see Managing Interventions and Groups
