ALPS FAQs

To see the change we have made to how we calculate the prior attainment for all students taking Level 3 courses from September 2019, click here.

Alps is a value added tool. It considers the progress a student makes from the start of their course (measured via their GCSE scores)through to the completion of the course (their A/AS/vocational results).

Your sixth form students will have a mixture of GCSE grades from 91 and A*G. Alps has looked into these mixed outcomes and decided to keep the existing Alps bands for the summer of 2019.

The Input

GCSE Score Calculation

For the reformed subjects the Alps points will be:

For the unreformed subjects the points remain the same:

To calculate the Alps Average GCSE Score, add up the points for each grade and divide by the number of subjects.

Dont forget that unreformed short courses (half GCSE) have half the points and double GCSE courses have double points and eachshould have a weighting of 0.5 and 2 respectively when calculating the average score.

Example calculation

We have made an important change to how we calculate the prior attainment for all students taking Level 3 courses from September 2019.This applies to both year 12 and year 13 students from September.

Input Score point changes for 2019/20

The 9-1 GCSE grades will be assigned the score 9-1 respectively

We will be applying the DfE transitional points (8.5-1) to the unreformed GCSE A*-G outcomes. (Note that up to now we had been using Alps points on a scale 8-1.)

Table 1 below shows the comparison of the old Alps points and the new transitional points that we will be using.

The decision to move to the transitional points reflects the fact that this cohort of students took many more 9-1 GCSE qualifications than A*-G in 2018 and is also in line with the way in which the DfE has calculated the L3VA and Performance Tables VA scores.

Note: Double Awards are treated as two separate GCSEs in the calculation, rather than an average of two grades.

Impact of the new prior attainment calculation across Key Stage 5

The two implications of changing our prior attainment calculation are:

Alps GCSE band recalibration - We have had to recalibrate our prior attainment bands for A level, AS level and BTEC Level 3 for analysis from September 2019, so that the equivalent student remains in the correct band (even though their score has changed).

Sept Y13 re-calculation - You will need to recalculate the prior attainment scores for any student moving from Year 12 to Year 13 this September using the new points.

(Note: You do not need to do any recalculation for students in the 2019 End of Year Report.)

For all KS5 imports, you will need the Average GCSE Scores as a baseline for your students.

If you have external students or do not use SIMS you will need to calculate these scores separately in Excel and then import the scores. If you use SIMS you can use our GCSE Score Calculator.

If you already have your baseline scores calculated, this data can be uploaded in the previous step or in a separate file. If it is saved in a separate file, you can upload this after inputting your other student data Connect Data only requires the Student ID to link the information.

For reformed subjects the Alps points will be:

For the remaining subjects the points remain the same:

To calculate the 2017/18 Alps Average GCSE Score, add up the points for each grade and divide by the number of subjects.

Dont forget that short course (half GCSE) has half the points and double GCSE courses have double points and each should have a weighting of 0.5 and 2 respectively when calculating the average score.

Level 2 equivalent qualifications are not included in the Alps Average GCSE Score calculation.

Example Calculation

A student completes 8 GCSEs:

As the combined science grade 7-6 is worth 2 GCSEs, the Average GCSE Score = 57.34/9 = 6.37

Importing Average GCSE scores

In order to append the data you imported in the previous step you need to create a spreadsheet that contains the Student ID and the Average GCSE score calculated above.

Please make sure you use the same Student ID numbers throughout the imports. Connect Data uses the Student IDs to link all your data together.

Now that you have created your spreadsheet containing the Student ID and Average GCSE Score, you now need to import it on your Student data tab using the import button. When prompted map your two columns as Student ID and Avg. GCSE Score click Done.

Your Average GCSE Scores should have been added to your existing data.

This article will show you how to:

Download the Average GCSE Score Calculator tool

Use the SIMS Auto-import

Use the Alternative SIMS Export method (useful if the auto-import does not work)

If you wish to add or amend individual students' GCSE Score, you can use our Manual GCSE Score calculator, which will calculate a student's score from the individual GCSE grades you enter - using the manual calculator.

Download the Average GCSE Score Calculator tool

The GCSE Score Calculator tool is available for download from the Prepare Data step of the Import Prior Attainment wizard.

When you have downloaded and installed the calculator, please open the programme using the icon on your desktop. You will see the screen below.

Editing student data

SIMS Auto-import

If you use SIMS, the calculator will link directly to your MIS. Click on the appropriate option, and a login screen will appear.

Log in and choose a convenient location to save the output file. It is this output file (in an .xml format) that you will import into the Prior Attainment wizard.

The scores will be calculated for you, and will be matched to the students in your Year Group based upon Student ID.

If this method generates a file size of 0KB, please try the Alternative SIMS Export below.

Alternative SIMS Export

If your organisation uses a hosted SIMS you will need to use the manual SIMS import, as our calculator will not be able to link directly to your SIMS. This requires you to run a report definition to extract the data from SIMS, then run this file through the installed GCSE Score Calculator. You can then import the output file into the Prior Attainment wizard.

Open the GCSE Score Calculator available for download from the Prepare Data step of the Import Prior Attainment wizard. Click on the Available MIS reports for manual import option. Please copy the appropriate definition and save to an easily accessible location.

Import the report definition into SIMS as detailed in our article on Exporting data from SIMS. To produce a report for each academic year, adjust the effective date of the report accordingly. The table below shows example dates for the different academic years.

Parameters

2018/19 Cohorts

2019/20 Cohorts

Effective date

31/05/2019

Today's date

Exam Date 1

31/05/2013

31/05/2014

Exam Date 2

31/08/2019

Today's date

Once you have chosen these dates, click Okay to run the report.

Choose an easy-to find location to save the file using the Browse button, and save the output as an .xml with schema file.

You now need to run this .xml file through the calculator. Open the GCSE Score Calculator again and click on Import from SIMS then go to the Manual Import tab. Load the .xml into the calculator.

Choose a save location for the output file and click OK. Your data will be extracted and saved as an .xml file.

When you import this .xml file into the Prior Attainment wizard, the scores will be calculated for you, and will be matched to the students in your Year Group based upon Student ID.

Please see our article onfor information on changing GCSE Scores for your students.

The sections detailed below give prompts for elements that may be helpful to check. Information flagged in these sections does not necessarily need to be changed, however we would encourage you to carefully review the information given on this screen to help you ensure that your report is as accurate and error free as possible.

Raw Results gives entries and grade counts for each subject and exam type. Using this screen, you can check that you have the number of entries and grades you were expecting.

For checking your raw results for KS4 reports, check that there are roughly the same number of maths and English GCSE entries. This should be reasonably close to your student numbers.

Combined science, along with the separate science entries, should roughly equal your number of students.

Check that your entries are what you were expecting, you can do a preliminary check of grades has anything been missed? Do you have the correct number of U or A* grades?

Report Ordering screen

Click Publish to make your Gradepoint live, after this you can Order Reports.

The next section allows you to check that your student profile has not changed beyond certain thresholds compared to previous data submissions. You can check that your student numbers and average prior attainment are generally consistent with previous Gradepoints.

For checking your student profile: wedon'texpect to see large variations in Average CGSE Score from year to year has this changed unexpectedly? Do you have the right number of disadvantaged students?

Finally, you can check that your subject mappings are consistent with previous Gradepoints. When you import your exam results Gradepoint, you will have no previous data so the Student and Subject sections will contain no comparisons. When you publish your monitoring data however, you will be able to check this against your published Exam Results Gradepoint.

For checking your subjects: have your subjects changed from one year to the next? Is this what you expect, or do you need to remap this subject?

Once you are happy with your data, click Publish to commit your data to the database and publish your Gradepoint, allowing you to order reports and, if subscribed to Connect Interactive, allowing you and your colleagues to view and interactively analyse the data.

If you are publishing an exam results Gradepoint, you will be given the option to go straight to the .

This article provides guidance on how best to manage your in-year Consortium monitoring data to allow you to analyse your on roll and taught at groups separately. We also have a 10 minute how-to video which runs through the content of this article.

We also have an article on how you can analyse your Consortium data using Connect Interactive.

Article relevant to:

Country

England, Wales, Northern Ireland, International Schools

Users wishing to

Submit monitoring data for a Consortium school

Key Stage

KS4, KS5

Definitions

We define On Roll students as students who are enrolled at your school/college, regardless of where they are taught. Taught At students are the students who are taught at your school/college, regardless of their on roll organisation. Guest students are therefore the students who are not enrolled at your school/college but are taught at your school/college. The Host school/college is your organisation, or the organisation you are adding data for that has guest students.

Best practice

While we are still developing further Consortia facilities in Connect Interactive, schools are able to analyse the progress of both their roll students and taught at students.

For example, if you had 25 biology students taught at your school, but five were guest students from your partner school(s), the biology staff could look at the Taught At monitoring point to determine the performance of all the students they taught. They can then look at the Roll monitoring point to review the progress of your 20 on roll students this Gradepoint would line up with Inspections and government performance tables.

Note: For end of year results data, you should continue to populate the predefined Roll and Taught At columns and once complete, let us know and we will produce the range of Consortia PDF reports on your behalf.

The image below shows an example of these two monitoring points in the Subjects section of Connect Interactive. This is how your colleagues would view the analysis.

Gradepoint Management area

The arrow in the top right indicates the Gradepoint Selector which allows you to choose the Roll gradepoint as the focal Gradepoint, allowing you to view all subjects your organisation teaches. Additionally, you can use the Compare feature on the left to select subsets of students, based on the roll and taught at data you have entered. Our article producing Consortium analysis in Connect Interactive provides further detailed instructions.

Similarly, school leaders can use the strategic reports section to review the overall performance of both groups of students.

Submitting the data for Data Managers

To achieve the format suggested above, please follow the guidance below to allow easy data entry and manipulation in Connect Data, and analysis within Connect Interactive.

Cohort Data

If you currently have Cohort workspaces for your on roll Year 12 and Year 13 students, we suggest you add your Year 12 guest students and Year 13 guest students (who are not enrolled at your school/college but are taught at your school/college) to these existing workspaces.

We recommend prefixing the IDs of your guest students with initials of the roll school. It is best practice to keep the initials consistent for each school when entering data into the roll and taught at columns, and pre-fixing Student IDs. This ensures that all Student IDs are unique SIMS Admission Numbers can be common between schools.

Prefix indicates guest students.

'Roll' data populated with school initials.

The images above show the Year 13 cohort, you can see that the Student ID of the guest student is prefixed with their roll organisation initials. I have used School Y in this example, shortening the names to SchY.

Note: You do not necessarily need to include all the data shown above for your guest students. The only data you need to receive from your partner schools is the ID number and prior attainment score (Average GCSE Score, KS2 Fine Score or Welsh National Test Score). Data such as Gender and Ethnicity can be used for more in-depth analysis within Connect Interactive, however it is not used when producing basic analyses.

Each school will need to liaise with the other to share the teacher predicted grades and the student details required for the different students.

Grades Data

For each monitoring data point you can create a Grades data workspace for only students on your roll and second Grades data workspace for all students taught at your school, whether on your roll or not.

Add this data as you would for a standard Monitoring Point make sure you remember to add any Student ID prefixes. Student IDs in the Cohort and Grades data must match exactly.

When you have added your data, please click Add to Connect to link your Cohort and Grades workspace, publishing your Gradepoint to Connect Interactive. To see the Gradepoint order shown in the screenshot of the Connect Interactive Subjects Overview above, please add the Roll Gradepoint to Connect first. If you add the Roll Gradepoint then the Taught At Gradepoint, then your Roll Gradepoint will appear as the left-hand column, with the Taught At being the focal Gradepoint on the right.

If you wish to change the order of the Gradepoints, you can do so in the of Connect Data.

Data sharing between schools/colleges

This article assumes that each group of schools/colleges have a well-established system to exchange student information including grades, attendance, attitude to learning etc. Data will need to be exchanged for each data collection point. It is possible however, for a school/college to grant permission for a colleague at a partner school/college to access their Connect Interactive in order to exchange information using the exports available.

With access to your partner schools Connect account you can use the Students section of Connect Interactive to export a filtered list of students into Excel this will include the students monitoring grades. You can then add this data into your own monitoring Gradepoint in the Connect account for your school.

Giving a colleague from another school access to a your Connect account is a local decision for each school or college, and where there are other data sharing arrangements available it is not necessary. The added user would not need access to the Management Tools or Connect Data.

If you have forgotten your password you can reset it from the login page ofConnect.

Clicking the reset password button will open a new window, enter your email address and click Send Instructions.

You will then receive an email with a link to reset your password; please follow the on-screen instructions.

Please be aware that the link contained in this email is only valid for one hour; after this time the link will no longer work. If the hour supplied elapses, request a further reset password email.

You now have the ability to change your password in Connect. To change your password, login and click the user icon at the top of your screen:

You will then be taken to another screen and asked to supply your current password and the password that you want to change it to:

Once you are happy with your new password, confirm it and click submit to save the changes.

This article will show you how to make edits to the student data you have imported. You can make edits individually, using the Edit Student screen, or in bulk, using either merge or overwrite.

Editing individual students

Bulk updates merge and overwrite

Once you have imported your Year Group you can go back and make amends to individual students, or make bulk updates and amends, such as importing an additional custom column or updating multiple teaching sets. To begin any edits, you need to navigate to the Year Group in the Students section. You can do this by clicking in the Year Group in the Year Group summary bar, or using the drop down lists on the Students page.

Deleting students, individually or in bulk, will remove all instances of that student from Connect Data teaching sets, personalised targets, previous monitoring points and exam results.

Editing individual students

To edit a student, click on the pencil icon to the right of the student entry.

This will open the Edit Student page. From this page you can amend or add student information, or change tabs to subject information to change the subjects, teaching sets or grades for that student.

Remember to Save, and republish your Gradepoint(s).

Bulk updates merge and overwrite

To edit information for multiple students at once, please click on the Import Additional Data button on the Students screen.

This will open a window which gives two options, Update and marge or Overwrite and replace. You will likely be using Update and merge most frequently, as this will allow you to import a spreadsheet containing a subset of data with changes, such as amended teaching sets for certain subjects. The application will then find the changes, apply these to the existing data, and leave any unamended data.

Overwrite and replace will delete any data that exists in your current data, but is not in your new import file. We anticipate this being used less frequently, however it gives the option to essentially start again without completely deleting all Year Group and Grades data.

Selecting the type of data you wish to update will launch the appropriate wizard. In the example below I am updating my mathematics teaching sets, importing mathematics only, and the two images show the different outcomes when using Update and merge and Overwrite and replace.

Once the Alps MEGs have been distributed to staff, we suggest that teachers set students personalised targets that take into account their flair in their particular subject. These would be negotiated between the teacher and each student and would not normally be below the MEG. Teachers can increase a MEG to a higher personalised target secure in the knowledge that they will be judged on how their subject performs against their subject thermometer and not whether their students meet these higher personalised target grades. Teachers can use the What-if on their subject page to see what Alps grade they would be aiming for if the students achieve these personalised target grades.

So in the image below we can see the:

Alps Minimum Expected grades (MEG) | Personalised target | The teacher predicted grade | What-if Grade

link

The Alps MEGs come from our national benchmarks. The personalised target has been agreed between the teacher and the student.

The Grade column (in this case) is the teacher predicted grade these lead to an Alps grade 4 (left side of the thermometer). Note predicted grades can have a fine grade element, in the is example + means a high or secure grade, = means a middle grade and means a low grade or at risk of dropping to the grade below. The teacher has then set the What-If to match the personalised target this leads to a projected Alps grade 3 (right side of the thermometer).

Once set up, whenever student level data is viewed, the personalised grades will show along the Alps MEGs. By clicking on a student name, you can see the grades for other subjects and other GradePoints:

The Students section shows the Student Performance Overview (SPO), with personalised target (PT) between the MEG and the Grade.

So once you have established a process for teachers to agree the personalised grades and submitted them to your MIS, this the to pass onto your MIS Team for how to add them.

You can now find your Group/MAT reports on the homepage of Connect under Reports & Downloads.

Click School & College Reportsto view your contracted reports.

Click on any School to view their reports.

You can then download the PDF reports from Connect.

Locate your activation code, which was sent in the post addressed to the Head/Principal.

Click here and enter your activation code to activate your account.

If you have already received your activation letter from us, go to our website and use the code to activate your account.

If you have not received an activation code from us, please call the office on 01484 887 600, and we can arrange for one to be sent to you.

This error is currently being looked into by our software team. To workaround this, please save and close the import and go to the Students page. Once you're in the Students page, continue the import from here and your teaching data should successfully import.

Our new feature in Connect Interactive this term allows you to compare subject and teaching set performance by prior attainment. This briefing paper is designed as a guide to how you might use the comparison to get the most from your end-of-year or in-year analysis.

The high, middle and low filter is available across all key stages and qualification types. The tables on the reverse of this paper set out how Alps bands relate to each of the high, middle and low definitions across different qualifications.

Turning on the high/middle/low comparison

In the subject analysis area, click Compare EDIT

In the Quick Groups tab, click on High/Middle/Low PA

Tick which categories you want to compare. In Fig 1 all 3 comparison groups have been selected

Apply comparisons

Overview for all subjects switch on the comparison in the subject overview to see how well each student group is performing across all subjects.

Fig 1 all three PA bands are being shown in one table (tick appropriate box in top left-hand corner of the screen). For may subjects the high PA students are performing less well than those of middle and low prior attainment. This might lead to discussions over stretch and challenge strategies for the more able across the curriculum.

Individual subject/teaching set pages once the comparison is switched on, the thermometer will visually display how each group is performing in that subject or teaching set.

Fig 2 here we see that the performance of the high prior attainers is slightly lower than those of lower prior attainment and is contributing to the overall value-added grade being lower than it might be otherwise. As the subject leader or teacher of this group of students, you might look at strategies which will have an impact on stretching them to attain top grades.

In the student tab of the subject area, the comparison will separate students into prior attainment groups. Teachers can perform What Ifs on specific students within a prior attainment group to model the impact an increase of grade might have on the overall or comparison groups Alps grade.

Definitions of Prior Attainment

1. KS4 England - The definitions of prior attainment follow the DfE guidance. The Alps bands which correspond to the Fine Grades and Scaled Scores from 2019.20 onwards are as follows:

PA definition

Alps Bands

KS2 Fine Grade

Scaled score

High

1-3

5.00+

107+

Middle

4-6

4.00+

96+

Low

7-10

3.00+

80+

2. Key Stage 5 England the definitions vary across qualification types. The table below shows the banding groups for monitoring bands for 2019.20 onwards.

England

GCSE Score

PA definition

Alps Band

A/AS level

BTEC/CACHE

UAL

High

1-4

6.10+

5.23+

4.39+

Middle

5-7

4.77+

3.75+

3.67+

Low

8-11

>0

>0

>0

3. Key Stage 5 Wales - the definitions vary across qualification types. The table below shows the banding groups for 2019.20 onwards.

Wales/Northern Ireland

GCSE Score

PA definition

Alps Band

A/AS level

BTEC/ CACHE

UAL

High

1-4

48.4+

44.8+

41.2+

Middle

5-7

43.0+

38.2+

37.6+

Low

8-11

>0

>0

>0

4. At Key Stage 4 in Wales, the following definitions apply:

PA definition

Alps Bands

Y8 WNT Score

High

1-3

108+

Middle

4-6

89+

Low

7-11

>0

The Monitoring Point Zero (MPZ) gradepoint in Connect Interactive is an important starting point for your year 13 students and helps staff set ambitious targets for their groups in the final year leading up to their A levels.

This gradepoint is based on the AS results or internal End of Year 12 Assessments, or a mixture of both.

Over the summer some students may have left your 6th Form provision or dropped some subjects, so the MPZ gradepoint takes the grades of just those students and their subjects continuing to A level and puts them against the A level benchmark.

This gives you at the very start of the Autumn Term:

A useful simulation of how your A level progress could look, if nothing changes between the end of Year 12 assessments and the A level results

The information on what areas and which students might be underperforming, to focus on from the start of Year 13.

A starting point against which to compare the monitoring grades awarded to students over the forthcoming academic year.

The MPZ grades would become the first set of monitoring grades for Year 13 in Connect Interactive for the Academic Year.

How to create an MPZ data in Connect Interactive

Ensure you have set up a Year 13 student cohort in Connect Data for 2018/19. This can be achieved by importing your current Year 13 Student data from your MIS. Note: you can copy the data from your 2017/18 Year 12 cohort, but your teaching sets notation will probably have changed

Copy your grade set from either your AS results or your latest Year 12 monitoring/assessment Grade Workspace into Excel

Ensure the IDs are the same as in your Year 13 Student Cohort Workspace

Remove any student who has not moved into Year 13

Remove any subjects from the remaining students if they have been dropped

Ensure all subjects are A levels

Create a new Monitoring Grade Workspace. You can choose any notation but please keep it short and use a notation that gives maximum information for your users of Connect Interactive for example, 19.Y13.MPZ tells staff that the data is for 2018/19 Year 13 students with a data point called MPZ

Import your tidied excel file of student IDs, subjects and grades

Add your MPZ Gradeset to Connect

There are 4 checklists which are designed for teaching and pastoral staff at all levels across your school / college. Each checklist covers four key review points across the Academic Year - September analysis of examination results / subject review, target setting, monitoring or in-year tracking points and quality assurance planning in the summer term. For each review point, we have identified some of the questions you might like to address, tailored to each specific checklist.

They are accompanied by short help videos on how staff might access the full functionality of Connect Interactive.

Please click to access the Subject Teacher's Checklist.

The Subject Teacher's Checklist is also available in Welsh (Cymraeg). To access the Welsh version, please click here.

Additionally, we have included one of our short videos to help you make the most of Connect Interactive.

Isolating your subject in the Student Performance Overview

Analysing your teaching set

Review of individual teaching set monitoring accuracy for subject review

Modelling grade changes - How Do I? and What If

Modelling the effect of individual students - using Ad Hoc

Review the impact of fine grades

There are 4 checklists which are designed for teaching and pastoral staff at all levels across your school / college. Each checklist covers four key review points across the Academic Year - September analysis of examination results / subject review, target setting, monitoring or in-year tracking points and quality assurance planning in the summer term. For each review point, we have identified some of the questions you might like to address, tailored to each specific checklist. They are accompanied by short help videos on how staff might access the full functionality of Connect Interactive.

Please click to access the Subject Leader's Checklist.

The Subject Leader's Checklist is also available in Welsh (Cymraeg). To access the Welsh version, please click here.

Additionally, we have included one of our short videos to help you make the most of Connect Interactive.

Subject review and accuracy of predictions

MEGs and targets by subject

Reviewing targets - are they aspirational?

Modelling grade changes - How Do I? and What If

Preparation for subject review

Isolating your subject in the Student Performance Overview for a monitoring point

Isolating your subject in the SPO for Exam outcomes

Review the impact of fine grades

There are 4 checklists which are designed for teaching and pastoral staff at all levels across your school / college. Each checklist covers four key review points across the Academic Year - September analysis of examination results / subject review, target setting, monitoring or in-year tracking points and quality assurance planning in the summer term. For each review point, we have identified some of the questions you might like to address, tailored to each specific checklist. They are accompanied by short help videos on how staff might access the full functionality of Connect Interactive.

Please click to access the Senior Leader's Checklist.

The Senior Leader's Checklist is also available in Welsh (Cymraeg). To access the Welsh version, please click here.

Additionally, we have produced some short videos to help you make the most of Connect Interactive. The videos below are the ones we feel will be of most use to Senior Leader's, however our full list of videos can be found here.

Gap analysis on strategic indicators

MEGs and subjects by target

Reviewing targets

Monitoring points - reviewing any gaps in your subject overview

Monitoring Accuracy sandwich

Review the impact of fine grades

Modelling grade changes - How Do I? and What If

There are 4 checklists which are designed for teaching and pastoral staff at all levels across your school / college. Each checklist covers four key review points across the Academic Year - September analysis of examination results / subject review, target setting, monitoring or in-year tracking points and quality assurance planning in the summer term. For each review point, we have identified some of the questions you might like to address, tailored to each specific checklist. They are accompanied by short help videos on how staff might access the full functionality of Connect Interactive.

Please click to access the Pastoral Leader's Checklist.

The Pastoral Leader's Checklist is also available in Welsh (Cymraeg). To access the Welsh version, please click here.

Additionally, we have included two of our short videos to help you make the most of Connect Interactive.

Student Performance Overview - Isolating your subject

Gap analysis on strategic indicators

The change in prior attainment input scores means that some students may have changed band if MEGs were set using previously published tables. This will affect a small number of your students only but does mean that the Minimum Expected Grade (MEG) may have slightly altered.

For both A level and AS level, where we have re-benchmarked, there is little change in the Expected Points for each prior attainment band, which has meant little or no change in the Minimum Expected Grades (MEGs) for each band or relative band.

Read the full briefing paper for 19/20 MEGs here.

Connect Interactive now allows you to print student postcards.

These can be accessed via the following route from your Connect Homepage click the Student Analysis box this takes you to the Student Performance Overview (SPO).

In the top right hand corner of the screen you will see the print button. This allows you to export the SPO to excel, or to generate the postcards on a PDF file which you can then print. Each page of print will include 8 student postcards.

You can also print postcards with target grades only on them from the Target Setting area. Click in the Target Setting box on your Connect Homepage.

Click on the Student Postcards box:

This will generate individual target cards which could be given to students at the beginning of the year.

Use of the postcards

Many schools and colleges like to construct Progress Walls or equivalent which allows them to visually display student cards to support with intervention strategies.

In this early stage we have included the following information on each card:

Student name

Tutor group

Subjects taught

Alps Minimum Expected Grade per subject

School Predicted Grade per subject (including Alps colour coding)

Adding in the filtering functionality

The filter and compare buttons can be used to refine the number of cards sent for Print, depending on your need, so for example, you may want to print your tutor group only. Add this by clicking in the EDIT button opposite filters, click the + button to add a filter and choose the appropriate filter from the drop down menu. Remember to click APPLY FILTERS.

Schools and colleges have suggested various uses for these postcards including;

Handouts for student target setting assemblies / stick in planners

Display and analysis for whole school intervention groups at KS4 and KS5

Basis for progress meetings between tutors / mentors and individual students

Parents evening take-away for parents

MEGs are set at the 75th percentile and based on the banded performance tables across the full suite of qualifications covered by Alps analysis. You can find full details of the MEGs in our Alps Guide, available form the Connect Homepage in Resources > Downloads.

Target setting software for KS4 and KS5 is available through Connect Data. Our article on Importing Data for Target Setting gives step by step instructions on how to produce MEGs from your prior attainment data.

In addition, with Connect Interactive, you will be able to track progress against these MEGs. You can also show your own internal target data, should you wish to.

30 mins

5 mins

To launch the Add Monitoring Grades wizard, please click on + Monitoring Point, or Create New Monitoring Point in the Gradepoint screen.

Publish

This wizard is very similar to the Exam Results wizard that you completed in the step above. The only slight difference is that we do not have a SIMS report definition to extract monitoring data. We recommend exporting a marksheet from SIMS, making sure to include the Student IDs used in the year group import. The two accepted file formats are below, with templates to help you prepare the data:

Rows per subject/entry format

Marksheet - subjects as column headers

The following articles on the wizard steps may help you to complete the import:

Mapping Columns

Subject mapping

Remove duplicates

Fix errors

Check the Raw Results within the Confirm step, then click Finish to complete the import. You will need to this Gradepoint before it is available to your colleagues for analysis in Connect Interactive.

If you make any changes to your exam results Gradepoint, such as remarks orimports of additional data at a later date, any reports you have already ordered will be reproduced automatically when you Publish your changes.

Changing your subject mappings

If you wish to order more reports or Connect Interactive then you will need to go to the Report Order Screen, select the desired reports and submit your order.

The articles listed below give details of commonly made changes to data:

Editing grades

Editing student data

Errors within imports can be caused by missing values, or values that the application has not recognised immediately, such as some Ethnicity codes. Critical errors will prevent you from clicking Next, and must be corrected or removed.

In the example below I have three types of error; a missing categorical value, a missing free text value, and values that have not been recognised by the application.

Missing values such as Disadvantage categories can only be yes or no, so when you click on the pencil to edit this data, you are given the possible options in a drop-down.

Errors such as missing tutor groups will allow you to enter the missing values.

Errors from values that the application cannot recognise will be critical errors, and will stop you from proceeding with the import until these are fixed. Values with defined categories, such as Ethnicity, Disadvantage and Gender will give dropdown lists, and allow you to correct these unrecognised values in bulk.

Alternatively, you can remove these values from your import.

November 2019

High/Middle/Low filter and compare options in Connect Interactive

You can now automatically compare the progress of your High, Middle and Low prior attaining students across the strategic and subject areas in Connect Interactive.

October 2019

View your Personalised Targets within Connect Interactive

View your personalised Targets on your subject pages and in the Student Performance Overview.

Export your Personalised Targets so they appear in PDF exports alongside Grades and MEGs.

September 2019

Nominate your Alps Champion

Our Alps Champion Programme launches in November - we have detailed guides, PowerPoints and webinars to help you understand everything you need to know about your Alps analysis

July 2019

Teaching Set Overview

Your subject overview area now has a tick box to enable you to view a summary of all your teaching sets. You can expand the subject table for your exam or monitoringgradepoint to view the breakdown of grades for your teaching sets.

Subject Value-Added Overview

Export an excel or PDF report of all subject pages, with the option to include teaching set pages. Quickly generate a summary report for discussion at SLT, governors and subject leader meetings.

Subject Page Exports

Export a PDF of your subject page showing your selected examination or monitoringpoints. This gives an overview of monitoring trends across a series of gradepoints to use as part of your subject review process.

Subject pages now include a breakdown of your key performance groups and teaching sets.

June 2019

Connect Data updates

Input and edit your data through a series of wizard steps, allowing easy data entry to help you take full advantage of your analysis and the features available in Connect Interactive.

Year Group Selector

Easily filter gradepoints for a particular cohort when selecting trends using new Year Group filters in the Gradepoint selector in Connect Interactive. Available from theGradepoint Selector.

SPO Export

Export your Connect Interactive Student Performance Overview with instructions, a summary page, report format output, marksheet and grid formats.

Filters and comparisons applied will also appear on the exports.

February 2019

Custom Comparisons

You can now use multiple comparison categories to create groups in your subject, teaching set and student analysis, including any custom groups you have added, to enhance analysis.

Fine Grades Update

The fine grade sliders in the Subject / Teaching set overview area now show numbers of students as well as the percentage.

Gradepoint Selector

New Mix & Match feature, it is now easier to construct the Gradepoints you want to see in your trends.

January 2019

Student names

All data grids contain names so that you can cross reference details quickly

School / College Names in headers

The name of your school / college will now appear in the bar at the top of your Connect screen, supporting colleagues with multiple logins working within MATs and consortia.

Subject Mapping in a Marksheet

You can now map subjects via the column header in the marksheet view. For those of you who are SIMS users, this will be a more familiar format to speed up your mapping.

November 2018

Custom Columns

Add your own custom columns to Connect Interactive, for example, SEND or feeder school.

October 2018

Monitoring Accuracy

A powerful tool to allow you to quickly identify subjects where the accuracy of predicting might be a cause for concern, to enable you to set informed priorities going forward.

Fine Grades Analysis

Effectively plan for different scenarios based on 'secure' or 'at-risk' fine grades by modelling their impact on your subjects.

Track student attainment across maths and English

Identify the students who are not achieving 5+ in both maths and English. You can compare how they are progressing in their other subjects to inform your targeted interventions.

Multiple Filtering and Comparisons

Apply additional filters and construct multiple filters. This will allow for more detailed analysis of your key groups.

Impact cards and tracking individual students

Exportable summary cards that can be used on a progress wall to track student progression.

September 2018

Target setting

Carry out target setting, including custom targets, for both Key Stage 4 and 5. You can generate Minimum Expected Grades (MEGs), and import them into your MIS.

Once you have imported your Year Group and prior attainment scores, you will be able to import your own Personalised Targets, if you wish to do so.

Fix errors

The Personalised Targets wizard can be launched from the quick actions toolbar in the top right-hand corner of the screen, or from the Year Group summary bar. This import is very similar to the grades import wizards; you need to import your Student IDs, subjects and teacher set targets.

The Personalised Target grades need to be whole grades, as they will be validated against the mapped subjects as monitoring or exam results imports would be. Your import spreadsheet can be in a rows per student (marksheet or broadsheet) format, or a rows per entry format.

Once you finish the Personalised Targets wizard, you can download your target setting resources immediately from the MEG Reports section of the toolbar or from the MEG Reports section of the Connect Homepage.

During your import using the Add Personalised Targets wizard, the following articles may also be of use:

Mapping columns

Subject mapping

Remove duplicates

The Cohorts page gives an overview of the data currently in the system. Until you have imported your basic student data using the + Year Group wizard, you will not be able to add prior attainment, and you will only be able to add teaching sets and personalised targets once you have imported your prior attainment. This is referred to as the Year Group summary bar, seen partly populated below.

Fix errors

Setting up your Year Group

To begin adding your Student Information, please click on the + Add Year Group to launch the Import Student Data wizard. Student data is fundamental to your Alps analysis and you should only need to import this once each year.

If you need to make any edits adding or removing a student for example you can do this at any time throughout the year using the Students page. You can also edit the details you import for your students, such as disadvantage data. Our article on Editing Student Data shows how to make edits to your imported data.

Select Student Group

The first wizard step asks you to specify the Academic Year and Year Group of your students. This should be the Academic Year in which the students are currently enrolled, rather than academic year they will complete their qualifications.

If you have entered data into the previous Academic Year using the new version of Connect Data, you may be able to use auto roll-over. If you need to make any amends, you can do so from the Students screen.

Prepare Data

When using the column mapping screen, you can create custom columns that your colleagues will be able to use in Connect Interactive. If you have custom columns, map your column to New Custom Column, name your column and Save.

You can import some/all of your prior attainment scores during the Student Data Import wizard, in which case the percentage of students with prior attainment will appear on the Cohort screen once you have completed the wizard. Alternatively, use the Import Prior Attainment wizard to import using a Key to Success file (KS4 in England), WNT Calculator (KS4 in Wales) or the GCSE Score Calculator (KS5 imports).

During your import, the following articles may also be of use:

Mapping columns

Remove duplicates

The Manage Users and Settingscan be found on the homepage of Connect under Management Tools. This will only be available to users who have administrative access. The administrative rights should be held by at least two users.

Adding Single Users

Staff can be added on a case-by-case basis, using the Add User tool option. Once in this section, complete the on-screen form and click save.

Adding Users in Bulk

If you want to add multiple staff in one go, click Bulk Add Users in the settings area, then download and completed the supplied Excel template and save it locally. Drag and drop the saved file into the box provided; clicking viewwill give you an overview of who is to be added. Once you are satisfied with your list of users, clicksave.

What happens next?

A confirmation email is sent to any added user. Within this email there is a link for them to click; doing this will take them to Connect and ask that they set a password. Once their password is set they will be immediately granted access.

If you do not already have your KS2 scores calculated and saved locally, you can download a Key to Success file from the DfE, using the student UPNs. Connect Data will read this file, and calculateeither the KS2 Fine Scores or the KS2 Scaled Scores, depending upon the Academic Year and Year Group specified.

To import your Key to Success file, launch the + Prior Attainment wizard from the Year Group summary bar.

Import your Key to Success file and click Next. The scores will be calculated for you, and will be matched to your students present in the selected Year Group using the UPN.

The banded by ability table helps you to start asking questions about the progress of groups of students. Which student prior attainment group made the most progress? Look at your high prior attainers are they making progress equivalent to the provider in the top 25% nationally over a 4-year trend? Have any prior attainment bands grown or reduced in number and what implications has this had on their collective progress? Has the progress of any group started to drop? Or has any group made significantly better progress?

What are the implications of these questions for you in the year ahead if you want to open a RED-HOT Alps report in the future? These questions provide a good starting point from which to evaluate the quality of learning and teaching across your institution. They can lead to discussions over curriculum choice or initiate collaboration between subjects for example, who facilitate middle ability prior attainers to make good progress and those where equivalent students make less progress.

In Connect Interactive, you can filter this table by gender, disadvantage, ethnicity and custom fields of your choice. Filters will help you to identify whether you have any discrepancies between groups, which in turn enables you to put strategies in place to ensure all students make good progress.

The strategic indicator known as the Quality Indicator (QI) tells you about the progress made across all examination entries across the school or college. It contains every grade taken by each eligible subject in the report and gives you a clear view of how your overall curriculum performed this year. The subjects taken by more students will have most impact on this indicator, as well as their outcomes. The QI compares your total actual points with the total expected points. It therefore follows that if every student in the cohort matched their 75th percentage target in each subject studied, your score would be 1.00.

Subject Value Added Overview KS5

The Subject Value Added Overview provides a 4-year picture of how the progress of students in each subject compares to progress made in that subject nationally.

When you submit your data to Alps, the raw results page will give you an overview of attainment outcomes. It will calculate attainment percentages within grade ranges and you will be able to check that all the grades have been uploaded accurately. You should also check that each subject has been mapped accurately in the upload process. The table also shows the average prior attainment by subject. You can then begin to compare the average start point of each subject to their average KS4 score. The table fragment below shows this detail.

The T score simply averages your 3 annual grades for RED teaching, BLUE teaching and the Quality Indicator. The three-year T score is the average of the 9 grades, i.e. of the 3 grades across the three years. It therefore gives you a sense of how your school or college is performing through time. A RED T score means that you have made progress at least equivalent to the top 25% nationally. A Blue T Score means that your progress is equivalent to the bottom 25% nationally.

Download the PDF - https://alps.education/alps-and-the-l3va-technical-comparison/

One of the most important aspects of using personalised targets for individual subjects is that subject staff can use the Minimum Expected Grade (MEG) and their own unique subject thermometers to be aspirational for each individual student.

This article takes you through how you might use Connect Interactive to check how aspirational these personalised targets are by adding them as a gradepoint.

There is a separate Knowledge Base article, Briefing Paper and webinar on how you use the MEGs and the subject thermometers to set these personalised targets.

Knowledge Base Article: Setting personalised targets

Briefing paper: Using Alps to set aspirational targets with students

Webinar: https://alps.education/alps-training-hub/webinars/

To create your personalised target setting gradepoint, follow the steps below, or watch the short video.

Create your cohort including your prior attainment

Add your teaching data the courses that your students are currently taking

This will then generate your MEGs automatically. Your MEGs will be available for export on the MEG Report section of the Connect Homepage

Add Personalised Targets the links above will guide you through how you might do this from MEGs, however all schools and colleges will have individual systems for generating these subject specific targets.

These will now be added to your MEG Reports and can be exported

Adding to Connect Data

You are now going to create a Monitoring Gradepoint for this set of personalised targets to check if they are aspirational.

Create a Monitoring Point name it clearly so that staff know that this is a target setting gradepoint and the Year Group it pertains to eg 20.Y12.Target check tells me that this is the target check gradepoint for Year 12 in Academic Year 2019.20

You can now Check and Publish this gradepoint to Connect Interactive

Fig 1 shows the subject value added scores for the target check gradepoint. I may be concerned about the aspirations of my Art and Business departments and I can use the What If tool to model the effect of increasing student personalised targets on the subject outcome.

Fig 1

Alps advise that each school/college have a minimum of two administrators. If you are the only administrator for your organisation, nominate a colleague who can assist in your absence. You will know if you are an administrator, if you can see the Manage Users & Settings section on the homepage.

Ensure that any members of staff who leave have their account disabled.

Do all of your colleagues have an appropriate level of access? You can check this by clicking on 'Edit' next to a user.

Access levels:

No Access:User only has access to Connect Interactive.

View Full PDF Reports:User can view full PDF reports as well as having access to Connect Interactive.

Upload Data and View Full PDF Reports:User can view reports, use Connect Interactive and upload, edit and view data.

To choose an access level for a user, simply click on the arrow to bring down the three levels of access, then choose the suitable access level for the user.

If you want to give the user administrative rights, make sure the settings box is ticked. This will give the user access to edit and add other users.

This article is designed to give you an overview of the mathematics and English comparison filter in the Student Performance Overview (SPO). This filter allows you to identify those students who are/are not hitting grade 5 achievement in mathematics and/or in English.

The purpose of the feature in Connect Interactive

Our drive is to make Connect Interactive a tool which supports you in all aspects of your tracking and analysis. We recognise that a big part of leadership at Key Stage 4 centres around English and mathematics as subject areas. More specifically, that you will want to identify students who are currently not meeting grade 5 in one or both subjects and develop effective and targeted intervention strategies with those not hitting the grades. This new feature allows you to do just that.

This tool is a slight departure from our usual stance as it centres on an attainment measure. However, combined with our Alps measurements of success, achieving at or higher than your Alps MEG, we believe this will be a useful tool.

You will have full visibility on the context of students, for example, a student who is not achieving grade 5 at maths, but whose progress is outstanding in Alps terms will still deserve our praise and recognition, and the conversation with that student can be tailored accordingly.

Using the Tracking (grade 5) in Mathematics and in English feature effectively

From your Connect Homepage, click on the orange box Student Analysis. This will take you to the Student Performance Overview (SPO).

The SPO shows you the horizontal overview of your students with colours indicating how the grade entered relates to their MEG Minimum Expected Grade. Colours indicate:

RED student is on or above MEG in that subject

PINK student is on the lower grade of a split MEG

BLACK student is one grade below MEG

BLUE student is more than one grade below MEG

Once in the SPO click on the EDIT button next to the Compare function. You want to choose the GCSE English/Mathematics Strong Pass option.

This will sort your students into categories, where met means achieving the grade 5:

Met in both

Below in mathematics only

Below in English only (this will be the better of a students English Language / Literature grade)

Not met in either

If you have used fine grades, the filter will only be applied to the whole grade.

Once you have applied the filter, you can export to excel.

Taking the context into consideration: Examples

Student A: Is achieving both mathematics and English, but the colours on their SPO continue to indicate that they are below MEG. This is a rather larger issue for the life chances of these students than meeting grade 5, and subject teachers should be addressing this on an individual basis with the student. The Pastoral Team will also have a role to play in the tracking and supporting of this student.

Student B: Achieving mathematics, but not English the English grade is 4+ which is BLACK with respect to MEG. This student is likely to be in the very top priority intervention group for the English department. The 4+ indicates that student is in the stretch fine grade category, and the chances of stretching them to a grade 5 is higher.

Student C: Not achieving either at grade 5, however all MEGs are RED, indicating that they are making good progress with respect to their baseline assessment at KS2. You are likely to have these students in an intervention group as they are on the boundary of the grade 5 in both, however,don'tforget that these students are already making strong progress and should be rewarded accordingly.

After importing your grades, you need to publish the Gradepoint. The Publish step is the final series of checks, and completing this step will allow you to order your Exam Results reports or view your Monitoring Point in Connect Interactive.

While the Monitoring and Exam Results wizards are very similar, the products of the wizards are quite different. The Exam Results wizard will produce a Gradepoint from which you can run your End of Year report, and the Monitoring wizard will produce Gradepoints that will appear in Connect Interactive.

From the Gradepoints screen, please click Check & Publish for your Gradepoint to go to a screen that will allow you to complete some final checks of your data.

Check & Publish

KS5 Exam Results have been imported, but arenot yet published.

Please see ourbest practicearticle for tips on using the screen.

After completing your teaching data import, you have completed your Year Group setup. On the Cohorts or Students screen you will see the updated Year Group summary bar, showing headline figures for your Year Group.

You can also export your student data, any personalised targets and the Alps generated MEGs from this screen. This is particularly helpful if you prefer to export and check your data within Excel.

You are now ready to add examination results or a monitoring point for these students.

Your RED teaching and BLUE teaching scores and grades are based on the percentage of entries in subjects that were graded either 1-3 or 7-9. Subjects with more entries have the most impact on both indicators. You want your RED teaching percentage to be as high as possible, in other words, a higher percentage of entries in subjects which are overall RED. Conversely, you want your BLUE teaching percentage to be as low as possible, meaning that fewer students have sat examinations in subjects with an overall BLUE outcome.

The extract below shows the percentage of entries that are scored 1,2 and 3 (Red), 4,5 and 6 (Black) and 7,8 and 9 (Blue). These percentages are then compared to national data and Red and Blue Teaching and Learning scores are shown on their respective thermometers.

The data on this page pulls together all the various subject scores and provides the overall school or college value-added progress measures for the last 4 years. It is the strategic starting point for most senior leaders and has several key indicators that are designed to give a broad view of progress across your school or college. It includes raw data relating to each cohort in relation to student numbers and prior achievement. It also includes a variety of different Alps indicators that measure value added performance of the cohort.

There is no single indicator that describes provision fully. Alps strategic overview analysis helps you to look at your data from a variety of different perspectives. For information about the individual strategic indicators, please search the knowledge base by the title of the indicator.

Banded by Ability KS5 England

The banded by ability table will give a four year performance trend. It enables you to ask some very precise questions about the performance of students in your school or college based on their prior attainment. The students in the year group are broken down into specific prior attainment bands, and the progress that they have made across all their subjects is mapped against national benchmarks. The table fragment below shows the top four bands of prior attainment for KS5 students and gives an Alps score related to the relative performance of this group of students compared to the national data set.

This is often the best place to start each August / September on your improvement journey. The table provides a 4-year overview of how the progress of students in each subject compares to progress made in that subject nationally.

On this page you can easily see trends towards improvement by subject. Equally you can see declines in progress scores. You can use this data to begin conversations with heads of department and establish patterns that might not be seen in raw results.

The extract below shows significant positive improvement over 4 years across a range of subjects but might spark a conversation regarding the 4 score in English Language, which for the previous 2 years has been red.

These are critical pages for subject staff to understand, they will help to identify priorities for department improvement plans and teaching schemes. This report is a powerful tool for enabling subject staff to look at progress made by groups of students against their MEGs, including disadvantaged, gender and prior attainment.

Connect Interactive complements and extends the analysis by subject area.

Each subject has its own benchmark thermometer that compares that subject department to all other departments of the same subject in the DfE national dataset. An Alps score of 1.00 means that all students have achieved their MEGs, but this can lead to different Alps grades for each subject, as each subject thermometer is unique. Students within the subject cohort are listed individually showing their MEG and their actual grades (or predicted grades if using this page in Connect Interactive monitoring). Remember that a GCSE report will have similar pages showing the detail of each group within a subject.

These are critical pages for subject staff to understand, they will help to identify priorities for department improvement plans and teaching schemes. This report is a powerful tool for enabling subject staff to look at progress made by groups of students against their MEGs.

Connect Interactive complements and extends the analysis by subject area. Each subject has its own benchmark thermometer that compares that subject department to all other departments of the same subject in the DfE national dataset. An Alps score of 1.00 means that all students have achieved their MEGs, but this can lead to different Alps grades for each subject, as each subject thermometer is unique. Students within the subject cohort are listed individually showing their MEG and their actual grades (or predicted grades if using this page in Connect Interactive monitoring).

The page fragment below shows a single subject report page for A level Biology. You can see that the expected points are shown, calculated using prior attainment data from KS4. You can also see the actual points scored and the calculation that generates the Alps subject indicator score. The subject 4 year trend is also shown, as is a full list of students entered for Biology ordered by their prior attainment data, showing their actual grade and their Alps minimum expected grade.

This page provides you with an overview of the progress being made by each of your teaching sets in your school. At Key Stage 4, you are also provided with a Teaching Set report, where you can further analyse the progress of each teaching set.

This is another useful tool for a detailed end of year analysis of progress and within a schedule of in-year monitoring. The extracts below show both consistency and variation within sets for various subjects.

You can also conduct interactive Teaching Set analysis using Connect Interactive:

All Alps Connect usernames are email addresses; this will be your school/college email address.

If you are still unable to gain access, you will need to speak to the Alps Connect administrator at your school/college, who will be able to assist you in gaining access. The administrator will more than likely be the data manager, headteacher or deputy headteacher.

Click here for more information on the users with admin access.

If a user leaves, Connect Administrators can remove users from the account.

Log into Connect and go to Manage Users &Settings.

In the list of users click Edit next to appropriate User.

Tick Disable and then Save.

Connect Interactive does not replace your end-of-year Provider report, and will only be available to those schools and colleges who order an end-of-year report. It gives you new ways to access and interact with the data contained in your Alps reports.

Monitoring reports

Monitoring reports are now run through the strategic section in Connect Interactive.

here

The Alps filter reports (e.g. gender, ethnicity, high grades) will still be available for 2018-19, although Connect Interactive includes the ability to monitor these groups and cohorts throughout the academic year. There is no limit to the number of monitoring reports that can be run throughout the year, they can also be run at anytime the user feels fit.

Click for a guide on how to run these reports.