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Overviews - Progress report tour

Updated 1 month ago by James Pembroke

The Overviews - Progress report is closely related to Overviews - Attainment but, as its name suggests, it deals with progress over time rather than attainment at a single point. In many ways it is similar to a Progress Matrix in that it shows the change in pupils' assessments between two points, but rather than show a detailed breakdown, this report provides a summary and is therefore well suited to audiences such as governors. We think you'll find it really handy.

In this guide you will learn how to:

  • Start the report
  • Fix the start and end points
  • Set the 'Expected Progress' rate
  • Select different subjects and types of assessment
  • Apply filters and groups
  • Show data for the whole school
What do we mean by 'Expected Progress'?

The report uses the terms 'Below Expected', 'Expected Progress', and 'Above Expected' to describe pupils' journey between two points. Before we move on, it is therefore worth defining what these terms mean in the context of this report; and this depends on the approach your school has taken:

  • If your school is using a levels-style or "linear" approach, then 'Expected Progress' may be defined as a certain number of points or steps gained over the selected period. Pupils making less than that number of points are defined as making 'Below Expected' progress; pupils making more than that number are defined as making 'Above Expected' progress. This typically applies to early years, which tend to be tracked via number of steps through the Development Matters age bands, but can also apply to your teacher assessments and/or linear assessment schemes such as Book Bands.
  • If your school has adopted a "point in time" assessment approach, where pupils tend to remain in the same assessment band for long periods or even throughout their time at school, then 'Expected Progress' will indicate that there has been no change in assessment over the selected period. Pupils that drop down an assessment band are described as having made 'Below Expected' progress; those that move up a band have made 'Above Expected' progress.

This distinctions is important as it affects how the report is set up. In this report we will be dealing with the latter example as this is the most popular set up in Insight.

If you're comparing two different kinds of assessment, eg EYFS development matters bands against KS1 statutory assessments, enter a '0' as your rate of expected progress. Since there's no way to meaningfully put numbers on this kind of progress, Insight can instead show whether pupils have maintained their standard. For example, if a pupil's starting point was 30-50= ('Below Expectation') and their end point was BLW (also 'Below Expectation'), that pupil will be classed as having made the expected amount of progress.
Creating a report

First, click on the Cohorts menu and select Overviews - Progress from the list. This will load the report for the most recent pupil groups you have been investigating for the current term. Here we're looking at year 5.

Now let's set the parameters for our report using the drop-down menus. A simple example is to look at the progress between the end of last year and the end of the current year. To do this, change the start point to 2018/19 using the From Year menu. As we are using teacher assessment (our 'Main Assessment') for this report and interested in progress between Summer terms, we don't need to change the other options right now.

We do, however, need to set the expected progress rate. As this school is using the 'point in time' assessment approach described above, this equates to no change in assessment over time. This will be defined by entering a 0 in the Expected Progress box (highlighted). If you have a steps-based approach, enter your expected rate of progress instead.

The red segments of the bar contain those pupils whose assessments have dropped, the green segment contains those that have maintained the previous standard, and the blue segment contains those whose assessments have improved.

Tip: click on the bars to reveal pupil names in each segment.
The figures shown on the left hand side of the report (e.g. +0.1, -0.1) represent the average progress score of the group. Each pupil that maintains their assessment level is assigned 0, those that move up a band get +1, those that move down a band get -1. These individual scores are averaged. Note: these are simple measures for guidance and are not the same as the published DfE progress scores.
Using Advanced Options

The report above includes a bar for Science despite there being no data for that subject. Click on Advanced Options and select just Reading, Writing and Maths from the Subjects list:

Tip: You can also opt to show pupil names in a list below each bar by clicking Show pupil names. If any of the bars have grey sections indicating pupils with missing assessments, you can exclude them from the report by selecting Exclude pupils with missing data.
Applying filters and groups

Now let's try filtering the report and comparing groups of pupils. We might want to remove pupils with SEND from the report. To do this, click on the Filter Pupils button, choose SEN and select No SEN. The report now contains only those pupils without SEND.

The next step is to group the data; here I've grouped it by gender. Click on the Group Pupils button and select Gender. Our report now shows the progress of non-SEND boys and girls in Year 5 between the end of last year and this year:

Tip: There are lots of other filter and grouping options. You can even combine them (e.g. boys that are also summer born). You can remove any filter or group from the report by clicking on the 'x' beside the selection. Try them out or see our guide here for more!
Mixing assessment types

In this next example we are going to compare pupils' KS1 result to their latest assessment. This means having different types of assessment selected at either end, in this case the KS1 result (named 'SAT TA' in Insight) compared to a teacher assessment (i.e. 'Main Assessment').

Note: filters and groups have been removed

The end point is unchanged but the start point is now set to 'Year 2' and 'SAT TA' (i.e. the KS1 result of current year 5). As you can see, approximately a third of pupils' assessments have dropped since KS1. Clicking on the red segment of the Writing bar reveals the pupils whose assessments have, for example, dropped from 'EXS' to 'Working Towards' and from 'GDS' to 'Expected'.

Selecting more than one year group

Our final example involves looking at data for all KS2 cohorts. The report compares each year group's progress from KS1 to the end of the current year. Start by clicking on the Year Group drop-down menu at the top, click Multiple selections, and tick years 3, 4, 5 and 6. Note the number of pupils included is shown to the left of each bar chart; our example now includes 225 pupils:

What is probably more useful is to compare year groups. To do this, simply click on Group Pupils and select Year Group.

The result is a report that compares the progress of each year group, in each subject, between KS1 and the latest assessment. For our data, we note that there appears to be a particular issue with Year 6 Reading data, where a higher proportion of pupils have seen their assessments fall since KS1:

This final example is a useful report for governors.
And finally… Download and Print

If you want to send the report to someone, you can either Download it as an image file, or click Print and use your web browser's 'Print to PDF' or 'Save as PDF' option. The latter is recommended for emailing and sharing with governors.

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

This has been a whirlwind tour touching on most features of a report that can be used for various purposes. If you need help with anything not covered here, just contact our friendly support team.

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