In iTRACK, you have the ability to add an extra column on your data entry page, to use for any purpose you require. We call this the 'free form' column, as it is customisable by each school. This has to be enabled by your Education Consultant or our support team, so if you would like this functionality, please do not hesitate to get in touch. All the information below is only relevant once we have initially turned this on.
Once enabled, you can then define what you need it for, in the school settings, by entering text in the box as shown below, then pressing save changes. Make sure to select the 'Foundation' tab when editing this column name (we will use 'effort' as the example here):
Please note: you can have a separate column with separate titles/usages in EYFS and KS1-3, by clicking the 'KS1-KS3' tab on the school settings and repeating the process.
How to use the column?
On the 'Enter Pupil Results' page (in the 'Foundation Stage' section), regardless of which setup you have, which curriculum, and what your Areas of Learning are, you will see an additional column with the title you entered in the settings. This will accept any form of data, including numbers, letters and words/phrases:
Why use the column?
Popular usages consist of effort grades, attitude to learning (AtL), school values, amongst many others. However in iTRACK, the benefits are two-fold:
1) Auto-Populated on Termly/EoY Reports
In the 'report writer preferences', you can choose the option to include your 'free form' data. This will then automatically pull the information through onto your reports, and is particularly useful if you want to give parents some extra information to support the attainment data.
2) Analysis
You will also be able to find some analysis of this information, regardless of what you use it for. It will display as 'Your Title' Analysis under the 'Foundation Stage' section of the left-hand menu (depending what your school settings are), in the case below - 'Effort Analysis':
- Select the year group
- Select academic year, which is the year's worth of data you wish to view
- Select whether or not to include leavers
- Press go
You will now see the data itself in the top 'effort analysis' table for every pupil in the cohort over the course of the year. Underneath in the 'effort stats' table you will get percentages which will also calculate for each assessment point.
Regardless of the data you enter, whether it's numeric (1/2/3), alphabetic (A/B/C), or words/phrases, iTRACK will calculate what percentage of pupils are working at each of them in the 'effort stats' table below.