ettle · school analytics
ettle
verb: to aim, to intend, to plan (Scots)
ettle is school analytics for Scottish secondaries: attendance, attainment, effort and equity, drawn from the data a school already records. Class teachers, guidance and senior leadership each see what fits their role, on whatever device is to hand. The picture stays current, so staff time goes to the pupils who need it rather than to assembling it.
The service
ettle brings attendance, tracking, SIMD and free-meal entitlement together as dashboards staff can act on. Class teachers, guidance and senior leadership each see what fits their role, on whatever device is to hand.
Access follows role. A class teacher sees their own classes. Guidance sees their caseload. Senior leadership sees the whole school. Each account is limited to what that person needs, and no further.
What it shows
Pupil profiles hold attendance, attainment against target, effort, behaviour and homework on one page, with each subject opening to its own tracking history. Cohort views cover year group, house and SIMD as red, amber and green tiles that drill through to the pupils behind each figure.
Attendance runs week by week, with a watch list of pupils below the persistent-absence threshold. Effort, behaviour and homework are averaged month by month, so a change of direction is visible during the year rather than at the end of it. Attainment is recorded as CfE levels with sub-levels through the Broad General Education, and as SQA grades with bands in the senior phase.
The poverty-related attainment gap sits on a single screen: free-meal entitlement and SIMD, compared subject by subject.
- S1180 pupils94.3%73% on track
- S2175 pupils93.8%53% on track
- S3170 pupils92%41% on track
- S4160 pupils90.3%56% on track
- S5145 pupils89.7%74% on track
- S6130 pupils91.8%77% on track
What changes
Assembling the working picture by hand is manual, done once a term at best, so a pattern that began in October is not visible until June. ettle does that assembly on every extract it receives, so the picture is as current as the last upload: termly if that suits the school, weekly or nightly if it doesn't.
There is no parallel system and no new data entry. ettle runs on the extract from the school's management information system, such as SEEMiS, so staff time goes to the intervention rather than the spreadsheet. One account per member of staff, and everyone working from the same current picture.
The poverty-related attainment gap is the measure Scottish schools are accountable for closing. ettle reports it by subject, by SIMD band and by free-meal entitlement.
298
pupils below the 90% attendance threshold
52%
of subject results rated effort 1 or 2, up 12 points since Sept
19pp
on-track gap between pupils entitled to free meals and the rest of the roll
33pp
on-track gap between the most and least deprived SIMD bands
Figures from the demonstration roll of 960 pupils, at the May tracking window.
Where it lives
A management information system is built for administration, and it is used sitting down. Getting a working picture out of one means time at a desk, in front of screens of records. The conversations that change a pupil's year do not happen there. They happen in a corridor, at a parents' evening, in the few minutes before a class starts.
ettle is a web app. Staff sign in from any browser on any device, with the same role-based account and the same security. The full picture is available on a phone in the corridor, a tablet in the guidance office or a laptop in the staffroom, so a conversation with a learner does not have to wait until someone is back at their desk.
A demonstration build
The demonstration is set at Kinraddie High, a fictional secondary, and is entirely self-contained. Every pupil, mark, attendance figure and flag is randomly generated, so anyone can click through it safely. The product signs in; the demonstration does not.
Open the demo
Nothing to install and no sign-in. The demonstration opens onto the full sample roll. Switching between Teacher, Guidance and SLT in the header changes both the data and the controls available.