Ladders report tour

Updated 3 years ago by James Pembroke

Ladders are a great way to see the progress of a cohort across the year and quickly spot fluctuations in attainment. The report includes a way of colour-coding pupils according to their characteristics, to help see patterns and trends. These reports are justifiably popular with classroom teachers and we love them too.

This guide will walk through some examples to show how to:

Access and run the Ladders report from the Cohorts menu;
Use the report controls to view different types of data;
Apply pupil groupings to see patterns and trends.

We've also included some tips to help you get the most out of the report.

Using Ladders in Insight

Click on the Cohorts menu and select Ladders.

A default report is generated showing the change in Main Assessment data in Reading across the current year, for whichever cohort you have investigated most recently. We're looking at Year 5:

The Basics

The report groups pupils by their assessment result in a single subject for each term. Each pupil is presented as a circle, either containing their initials or a number, depending on the report settings and your access level.

You can make the report anonymous by un-checking the Show Pupil Initials option.

By clicking on any circle, we can join the dots to show that pupil's journey across the year.

The terminology, cell colouring and number of rows you see will reflect your school's chosen assessment language for the data you're looking at. In our example below, we see that Katie was 'Working Towards' expectations at the end of last year, was assessed as working 'Above' expectations in the Spring and ended the year at 'Expected':

Clicking on a pupil's name will take you to their individual report page, where you can access more detailed information.

Using other types of assessment

As with other reports, we're not restricted to looking at the 'Main Assessment'; we can use other types of data, too. In the following example, we've changed the Assessment Name option to 'Rising Stars' (a standardised test). This now groups pupils according to their test scores:

You can set your own thresholds for test scores. Please get in touch to find out more.

Grouping pupils by their characteristics

The main purpose of the report is to group pupils by their attainment over time, but you can also group them by their characteristics. To do this, simply click on the Group Pupils button and select an option to colour code pupils on the basis of your selection:

In this case we have selected Disadvantaged from the Pupil Premium, FSM etc sub menu. Here's the result:

Disadvantaged pupils are easily identified by pink dots (note the legend below the Ladder).

Apply filters to the report to remove specific groups or individual children by clicking the Filter Pupils button. Check our guide on Getting Started with Filters and Groups for more detail.

Combining groups

You can combine groups to refine your report. For example, you might want to explore the progress of boys who are also disadvantaged. To do that, click on the then by button next to your pupil selections and add another group, in this case Gender. The report is now colour coded according to the combined characteristics selected:

To remove groups and filters simply click on the 'x' icon beside each one.

And finally… Download and Print

You can save the report as an image file or print it using the Download and Print buttons to the top right of the Ladder. You can save the report in PDF format by clicking the Print button and and using your web browser's 'Print to PDF' or 'Save as PDF' option.

Another option is simply to copy and email the URL (the web address) in the address bar. This is a good option for sharing amongst staff who have their own access.

Further support

We hope this guide has been useful and given you plenty of ideas for using Ladders. We hope you enjoy using it as much as we do! If you need help with anything not covered here, just contact our friendly support team.