What happened
Haslam Park Primary School has high pupil mobility, over 10% of pupils with an EHCP and an ASD unit, so headline data never tells the full story. Headteacher Kati-Ann Roughley wants the broadest range of evidence she can get, not just the numbers.
A lot of the best evidence is spoken: what leaders see in a book look, notice on a learning walk or hear from pupils. Too often it stays in a notebook. Katie and Teaching & Learning Lead Emily Griffin now talk their observations through, have them transcribed, and bring them into Intelligent Evidence, where they’re matched to the framework.
Saying what they saw
For a book look, Emily pre-planned three questions and said out loud what she saw, book by book, pupil by pupil. A forensic Year 6 book look used to take her an afternoon. By her estimate, it took about twenty minutes. The learning walk taught her the other half: observe first with no recording running, then step back afterwards and talk through a set of prompts about what you’ve just seen.
More present with the children
For pupil voice, not writing while listening changed the conversation. Emily is now listening to the children, and it feels more like a conversation than a list of questions. Katie is clear that nothing human has been taken out of the process: it has added to it.
Evidence in one place, ready for the next conversation
Once the evidence is in Intelligent Evidence, it’s matched to the framework, including evidence Katie hadn’t thought of as evidence at all. Their conversations became more forensic: tick off what’s met, spot the gap, go and meet it. Katie says she’s saved weeks on self-evaluation and data collection, so the school improvement conversation can focus on next steps.
Read the full case study
The full case study goes deeper: how a passing comment in Emily's book look came back as a flagged next step, why forensic detail matters so much with this many pupils on an EHCP, and how the school plans to give governors read-only access.
