Drowning in data

Released 26/01/2010

Suzannah Wright ponders information overloads

Last week I braved the cold weather and vagaries of London transport to attend a confernce on Cashless Catering organised by Croydon Council. The conference was well worth the journey: a practical and detailed day in which we got some good advice on implementing a centralised catering managment system across an LA.

But what struck me on the day was the increasing amounts of data available to schools. Several presenters on the day explored the range and depth of information which cashless catering systems can capture, but that isn't the only source of data. MIS systems are increasingly complex and can help schools capture and explore data on a number of levels.

In Croydon, they dicussed how these data streams might be combined with other things such as socio-economic data based on postcodes, to supoprt meaningful investigations into things like the effect of free school meals on attendance (does a hungry child come to school for the lunch?) or healthier food choices on results.

It's all very exciting, but I began to wonder whether schools are euqipped to make the most of all this. Without a good collection and reporting system and an appropriately trained person - with time to explore and research - data is pretty useless.

It seems to me that schools will be dealing with more and mroe data in the future. So what are they doing to prepare for this? And what, if anything, should LAs, governement and industry be doing to support them?

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