Data is a vital tool for focusing the school improvement effort. Working with GradeMaker, the Ministry for Education in Guyana introduced a national data portal, bringing new insight to school leaders, regional officials and national planners.

Supporting national policy

Guyana has always been recognised for its sharp focus on educational improvement.

In November 2016, the Ministry began working with GradeMaker to introduce a national data portal to help better target the school improvement effort. Guyana has 670 schools across 10 regions, and a particular area of focus was to help develop the inland regions (a national priority), as well as build strength in STEM.

Rich data

A large bank of student results data (from tests at Grades 4, 6, 9 and 11) was loaded into the portal, with additional information about schools. There was no unique pupil identifier so, to make the data more usable, it was linked together using ‘fuzzy matching’ technology, beginning with the primary school results. The result was a highly searchable, rich data resource.

Delivers new insights

A suite of interactive reports was created for each stakeholder group – schools, regions and ministry officials. These have provided new insights into the education system in many key areas:

• Primary and secondary attainment reports, including trends over 3 years
• STEM performance (for all levels)
• ‘Key measure’ reports to reflect national policy
• ‘Topic’ reports (for Grade 6).

Users access reports relevant to them across the web or, where bandwidth is lacking, by personalised PDFs.

The first ever progress reports

A major innovation was the introduction of Guyana’s first progress reports, comparing students’ actual results to their predicted attainment at the end of primary school.

These reports are available for each pupil, school, and across all 10 regions. Similar progress reports for secondary schools have been delivered since 2018.

Progress reports are a transformational tool in school evaluation. By stripping out prior attainment, they reveal the contribution a school makes to their students’ success. The reports show that traditional attainment measures often hide the true story of a school's performance.

Embedding data in daily life

The key objective of the project for the Ministry was to embed data usage into regular practice, to empower users, improve planning and increase accountability.

An important project strand was planning how to engage users and build data-based decision making into practice. To do this GradeMaker and its partners supported the Ministry in training users from across the country, and in planning how to use data effectively in the annual school planning cycle.

The portal has now been rolled out to all schools in Guyana. After each exam session, more data is loaded to the system, and the range of reports available continues to expand.

To find out more about the power of results analysis, visit the GradeMaker website