SEIAG/02/15 - STACS REVIEW REPORT
The STACs Review is being managed by George Wynne, who is leading a team (The STACs Review Team) comprised of Valerie West (SEED statistician) and a team of consultants (The Project Team), Alistair Fyfe, Tony Flisch and Stewart Jardine.
The STACs Review Team will:
- liase with the STACs Focus group,
- achieve affective consultation with stakeholders,
- propose and seek agreement on changes to the product,
- devise prototypes and identify and evaluate processing and publication options that make more use of web technologies and schools' management information systems,
- draw up a user requirement for change,
- quality assure and cost the user requirement,
- draft a plan for testing and piloting any new software,
- implement tests and support piloting,
- prepare staff development materials and training packs,
- deliver training courses and seminars.
As a result of the review, there will be a need to revise the guidance on the approach to the analysis of examination results, but this will not require a completely new approach.
The Project Team will organise and run national seminars for school and local authority staff. As a result of the review, there may be a need to revise the software tools provided to schools and local authorities.
The Review Team intend 6 phases of development for the Review
Investigation
Consultation
User Requirement
Staff Development Materials
Staff Development
Review.
At the beginning of each phase, the Review Team will prepare an implementation plan that will identify the tasks to be undertaken, the SEED resources available, the timetable for completion and the deliverables to be produced. The nature of the project is such that each phase is to some extent dependent on the previous one. Each phase is described in more detail below.
Phases 1 and 2: Investigation and Consultation
Evaluating the current statistical measures, paying particular attention to value added aggregate measures, but also including NCDs, the noted problems with some RR calculations and the use of RR asterisking at Intermediate 1 and 2 levels.
Obtaining feedback from users on aspects of the existing system such as: the content of the tables and charts, the software for displaying and printing the tables and charts, the provision of additional data files for further analysis. Wide consultation is being conducted through the online questionnaire, deep consultation through the Focus Group. There are some types of information that were considered for inclusion in the current STACs system but are not included at present. These include information on achievement of NQ Units, achievement of Core Skills, and information on performance in modes such as science, social subjects and modern languages. Providing options for change may involve the preparation of prototypes, including prototype statistics, if necessary, as well as examples of new table and chart layouts.
Phase 3: User Requirement
The Review Team will draw up, quality assure and cost the user requirement. The user requirement may consist of prototype software and supporting written documentation. The Review Team will consider issues such as completeness and appropriateness and comment upon on the technical feasibility and likely resource requirements. The production of the user requirement will be undertaken by SEED staff, or other contractors.
Phases 4 and 5: Staff Development Materials and Staff Development
The Project Team will prepare and deliver staff development materials. The Project Team will have to work closely with the software developers to get extracts of tables and charts for inclusion in the staff development materials. This will facilitate the role of the Project Team in supporting the testing and piloting of new software designed to meet the SEED user requirement. The Project Team will design and deliver national seminars for staff from schools and local authorities.
Phase 6: Support
The project team will provide support to SE staff for the use of the revised STACS system with both pre and post appeal data. Support will focus on assisting SE staff to respond to queries from school users.
SEED IAC ISSU
November 2002