This Autumn we are proud to launch Bromcom Analytics, a set of Reports and Dashboards that combine metrics from across the MIS in one place, allowing you to take the pulse of your school’s performance in seconds and investigate troublesome indicators to get the story behind the data. Fully integrated with and accessed via Bromcom MIS it is also customisable, as the use of Microsoft Power BI provides an enterprise grade tool for customising and adding to the available analysis.
The Headteacher’s Dashboard showing metrics from across the MIS against local and national benchmarks
Bromcom Analytics joins together data from across the MIS system, giving school leaders a complete picture of what is happening in their schools. The Headteacher’s Dashboard shows Key Performance Indicators relating to Attainment, Progress, Attendance, Behaviour and Exclusions while the Subject Leaders’ Dashboard links internal assessments to Exam Results and charts the progress of current and previous cohorts from the beginning of Key Stage Four to their GCSE results.
The Mapping Tool can be used to monitor applications and to investigate area effects on pupil outcomes
None of these individual metrics are unavailable via traditional MIS reporting methods, what is revolutionary about Bromcom Analytics is the speed at which comparisons and connections can be drawn across different data domains and time periods. Given that the time available to school leaders to conduct investigations is severely constrained by all their other responsibilities, broadening and deepening their perspective in this way adds another dimension to their ability to identify and remove barriers to learning.
Reviewing Subject Performance with the Subject Leaders Dashboard
Having the ability to see a wide range of data combined with such responsive filtering enables the user to quickly make decisions over whether intervention is needed. The Attendance Focus page shows the attendance of the whole school and key contextual groups. A date slider allows the user to focus on any period, while the conditional formatting highlights significant deviation from the national average for each group.
The Attendance Focus Page colour coding absence and persistent absence against national averages
The speed with which the user can drilldown behaviour incidents from departmental to teacher level allows leaders to see not only the proportions of positive and negative incidents being recorded but also how consistently the behaviour policy is being applied. The ability to survey the whole school picture but then drilldown to focus on the specific year group/time period or staff member where the inconsistency is located is powerful tool for targeting intervention to ensure whole school practice is effective.
Focus allows the consistency of behaviour policy implementation to be reviewed
Ultimately improvements to learning outcomes come from the interaction that education professionals have with each other and with their students. Of course, insights from intelligent data analysis inform those interactions, but just as critical is that those insights can be accessed quickly so as to leave as much time as possible to act on the information gained. We see the most important advance of Bromcom Analytics to be its flexibility and speed, with the performance of the whole school accessible at a glance and the ability to drill from the whole school to pupil level in seconds, connecting the overall picture with the unique circumstances of individual pupils.
Another great advantage of the system is the opportunity customers have to modify and customise the product. By supplying the BI Desktop files we are giving our users a chance to tailor the end product to the specific needs of their school. The BI Dashboards are connected to live MIS data using an OData feed, a protocol developed by Microsoft that securely transfers the data in connected tables. We felt a standard set of tables was an important innovation as our hope is that a community of BI users will grow and share ideas and resources.
