SMARTcurriculum Update Issue 6

After a year of development, we are now entering our second year of licences and those who have been using the app will see some major feature developments that will be released in September 2019. Three features will be the curriculum model feedback, the staff expenditure chart and the staffing analysis.

The Curriculum Model

Consider the impact of class size on the overall curriculum design

Following feedback from users, we have added a feedback feature that compares class size with the target class entered into global parameters. This uses the default size unless you have edited for your own school. The feedback is in the form of red, amber, green indicators. Red will show you have more than one student below the target size, amber within one child of the target size and green more than one child above the target size. The feedback gives you a measure of how the contributing blocks impact the overall average class size. A swathe of green indicates you are well within the target, conversely lots of red show where the challenges in class sizes can be addressed.

Where you have used banding or option blocks the same methodology is applied to those indicators. Again the overall purpose is to give you a measure of where work may need to be done.

If you move the mouse over the cells you will find a comment box with active description and data to understand what this is showing.

Staff Expenditure Charts

Clearer staff expenditure visualisation

Within the Finance tab, many users have asked for more information related to staffing expenditure as a proportion of income. We have redesigned the chart to give much more information on staff spend, per pupil funding and total income.

The charts are dynamic; mouse over any element and explanation comments will appear.

Staffing Analysis – Management Group bought and planned teacher periods.

More sophisticated staff deployment view- subsidiary subjects included.

The updated Staff Deployment chart has been improved to include more than using each teacher’s primary subject. Now included is the ability to allocate any number of periods to subjects two, three and four on the Staffing table in the Data Hub. Users have found it difficult to see how to make up shortfalls in specialist staff where they are drawn from other subject areas. By moving the slider you will show how staff are deployed within the school to cover those shortfalls in teaching periods. The mouse comments provides a pop up that will give you the detail.

Finance Analysis

The updated Cost tab now named Finance. The addition of a Finance Data tab will be further populated with data tables similar to the other Curriculum and Staffing tabs. The data table included has been moved from the Curriculum Data tab and will be added to over coming months with more useful data analysis. The Finance Chart tab has changed with the inclusion of Cost per hour analysis for teaching and support staff

Items to follow

We are working to develop a Group analysis section within this new year which will enable comparison and discussion across a Trust or Group of schools. To enable this we will be working on releases that will lead to this point later in the year.

  • Dataset comparison to enable progress to be monitored over time
  • Group dashboard to be able to report group progress
  • Improved analysis reporting to support
  • Central team analysis
  • Updated ICFP measures and bench-marking
  • Improved data entry processes

Please contact us for more information of SMARTcurriculum and the analysis it can provide info@smartcurriculum.net or call 0203 701 2854