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Analysis & Bench-marking

Analysis and bench-marking are CASPA’s raison d’etre. CASPA’s uses a bench-marking model that takes account of a pupil’s age, level of prior attainment and categories of special educational need, and then provides an analysis and reporting engine to allow actual and target progress to be compared against expectations derived from comparative data based on the analysis of assessment results submitted to us by users of CASPA.

To download a detailed explanation, in Adobe Acrobat PDF format, of CASPA’s bench-marking model and the reasoning behind it, and to see how CASPA’s analysis and reporting mechanisms develop from that, with examples of reporting and the interpretation of reports, please click here.

For examples of the kinds of reporting available in CASPA, please click here.

Simplifying the analysis of pupil progress

CASPA simplifies the otherwise daunting task of analysing and presenting information about how your pupils are progressing, by comparing progress of individual pupils against comparable pupils of the same age, level of prior attainment and categories of special educational need; CASPA’s comparative data is based on the analysis of anonymised data submitted by schools using CASPA.

For a more detailed view of how CASPA works, we strongly recommend downloading and reviewing the Adobe Acrobat PDF document available by clicking here.

Analysis and bench-marking by category of need

CASPA uses an analysis model that takes account of categories of special educational need for individual pupils, in addition to their age and level of prior attainment, and which reflects the fact that children often have complex combinations of need; to ensure meaningful bench-marking, CASPA gives schools an appropriate level of flexibility in how they categorise their pupils, the rationale for this being as developed in the introduction to analysis and bench-marking CASPA available for download by clicking here.

  • CASPA enables bench-marking of a pupil’s attainment against each of the pupil’s recorded categories of need, rather than just a single main area of need.
  • CASPA allows schools to select for each pupil the categories of need that they feel describes the group of pupils an individual child most naturally compares to as the basis on which to compare his or her attainment.
  • CASPA differentiates between categories of need that are associated with a degree of learning difficulty, and categories of need which are not
  • Where the categories of need recorded for a child do not include a degree of learning difficulty, schools will be prompted to enter one.

Analysis and bench-marking of actual versus expected progress

CASPA’s analysis model for identifying expected progress takes account of levels of prior attainment as well as the age and categories of need of individual pupils, thereby allowing more robust and reliable comparisons of actual and expected progress:

  • CASPA reflects the fact that, even for children with a given category of need, expectations of progress for an individual child will differ according to the severity of that child’s needs
  • CASPA enhances the reliability and significance of expected progress data for individual pupils and cohorts by taking prior attainment into account
  • Expectations of progress taking account of prior attainment are based on percentile data, reflecting the range of outcomes reported for different categories of need.
  • CASPA allows actual or target progress to be compared against expectations over any period for which the requisite results or targets exist.

Reporting of actual versus expected progress

The reporting in CASPA has been designed to make it easy for schools to draw conclusions from the assessment and target data they have collected, as well as providing in just a few mouse clicks the types of top-level information required to complete your school’s Self Evaluation Form (SEF). Reporting is available in CASPA for individual pupils, for groups of pupils and at whole-school level, all with the same aim of providing you with the information you need in order to improve outcomes for the pupils in your school. For an introduction to CASPA’s reporting of actual versus expected progress and how such reports can be interpreted for individuals and groups of pupils, please click here.

  • CASPA significantly extends the top-level reporting of performance for cohorts of pupils through reports that clearly identify whether the actual, or target, progress of pupils, based on prior attainment, is meeting, exceeds or is below statistical expectations.
  • CASPA provides ‘drill down’ analysis for any cohort of pupils to illustrate the spread of differences between actual, or target, progress and expectations based on prior attainment.
  • CASPA allows the actual, or target, progress of cohorts of pupils to be compared against Value Added Medians, highlighting the influence of prior attainment on actual, or target, progress or ‘value added’.
  • All the reporting in CASPA allows the immediate identification of the individual pupils on which any summary information is based

A wealth of analysis and reporting

CASPA includes a much wider range of analysis and reporting than the few key areas highlighted above. For examples of other types of reporting in CASPA, please click here.