New School Performance Dashboard provides detailed information for governors

The FFT Governor Dashboard will help school governors hold schools to account, support and challenge the leadership team, and make more informed strategic decisions. It provides governors with information about:

• Summary school performance - an analysis of the main school performance indicators, including attainment (pupil results), achievement (pupil progress), and a summary of strengths and weaknesses.
• Subjects - an analysis of pupil progress in core subjects (primary) and GCSE subjects (secondary).
• Pupil groups - a simple chart showing the progress made by different pupil groups over three years, including pupil premium pupils. School context - a breakdown of school cohort by pupil groups (school and national).
• Attendance - an analysis of absence (by pupil groups) and attendance (by year group).

The headline school performance indicators in the FFT Governor Dashboard are consistent with information published in the Department for Education performance tables, the Ofsted School Data Dashboard and RAISEonline. The dashboard also provides a wide range of school performance indicators that have been calculated by FFT, including value added pupil progress for all subjects, attendance by year group and a summary of strengths and weaknesses for the school.

Governors will have the information they need to answer questions about how results and pupil progress compare to other schools and to see which pupil groups (e.g. FSM or pupil premium) are making good progress.

All schools subscribing to FFT (most schools in England) will be able to download the FFT Governor Dashboard and accompanying training guides and share it easily with governors. FFT will continue developing the governor dashboard; plans for the next 12 months include extending the dashboard to infant schools (KS1) and post-16 (KS5) and developing an online interactive dashboard.

Paul Charman, a Director at FFT and Chair of Governors at Dyson Perrins Church of England Academy, said: "For the first time, all governors will have the information they need to hold schools to account in a dashboard which is easy to use and understand. FFT has been providing data to schools for ten years to support school improvement, and now governors will be able to easily access this information as well."

Commenting on the recent Ofsted Data Dashboard, Charman said: "While the Ofsted dashboard provides a useful summary view for parents and governors, the new FFT dashboard should provide more of the detail needed for governors to really hold schools to account. FFT has worked closely with governors to develop the new dashboard.

"We've had very positive feedback from our pilot schools. The FFT dashboard provides a much richer set of information in a standard format, which will help all governors to properly support and challenge their schools."

Emma Knights, Chief Executive of the National Governors' Association, commented: "For the past two years, the National Governors' Association has been calling for governing bodies to be given a specific summary of their school's performance data, and therefore we are delighted that FFT has taken up the challenge and stepped up to develop this dashboard alongside governors.

"We are particularly pleased that the dashboard will be updated early in the autumn term with the summer results. Of course, school governors also need to know about the progress of pupils in each year at the school - and we are now working with partners to make this happen more effectively."

Sir John Holman, Senior Fellow for Education at the Wellcome Trust, commented: "An important area of the Trust's work is in supporting schools, where we believe the foundations of scientific excellence are laid. We have been developing a strand of work on school governance, realising that good governance is essential for achieving the very best education in any subject, science included.

"Creating good information gateways such as the FFT dashboard - designed by governors, for governors - will give them the high level information they need to hold schools to account. This complements Ofsted's work in this area, and also links with the Trust's Recommended Code of School Governance in terms of assessing school performance and informing the development of strategy."