4Matrix Frequently Asked Questions

The following are Frequently Asked Questions about 4Matrix.
If your question is not answered here then please contact us.

Q. What is 4Matrix ?
A. 4Matrix is an industry standard, SQL-driven, web-enabled, multi-user application and research tool for use by subject leaders and teachers to research the factors influencing pupil performance in their subject. 4Matrix extracts the most recent GCSE results, analyses them, generates a series of reports, and provides an interactive data analysis and research toolkit. Schools can also cut and paste current Y11 grades from a spreadsheet and forecast comparative achievement in next Summer's exams. 4Matrix contains an SQL database containing details of every examination and all national subject comparative data. This database automatically updates itself so it is always using the most recently available information.

Q. What is your top Unique Selling Point?
A. There are many good reasons for acquiring 4Matrix, but schools tell us that the most important thing for them is that 4Matrix will extract and process their exam results in August and produce all the reports that a school needs mostly within one hour of receiving the results. More importantly it produces subject reports automatically providing a detailed numerical commentary comparing every subject with schools nationally.

Q. Does it allow us to track pupil progress as well as analyse exam results?
A. Yes. 4Matrix can be used throughout the year to import estimated and target grades for current year 10 and 11 pupils and it will analyse, compare and forecast future attainment from these series of data. We are currently developing a Flight Path tool in association with the Fisher Family Trust which will provide the best possible tool to track pupils towards a target grade.

Q. We do a lot of data analysis - why would we need to use 4Matrix?
A. Most schools are now data rich but information poor. A school can have a lot of low-level data which it may use in mostly low-level ways. A list of grades, for example, will tell a school very little that it doesn't already know. What is needed are tools to convert grades and other low-level data into useful management information that can be acted on. 4Matrix interprets low-level data into high-level commentaries. It is a tool designed for educationalists rather than statisticians.
One Academy principal said of this:
     "Having lots of data is not what self-evaluation is about.
      What counts is having the right tools to make top-level judgments on that data.”

Q. What does your system offer that we can't do already?
A. There are many good reasons for using 4Matrix. Our new version, 4Matrix, will:
1. Provide data professionals with a serious, flexible, versatile professional toolkit
2. Forecast comparative achievement in the 2012 and 2013 examinations
3. Display photo-montage posters for those likely to fall short of 5A*-C grades in their future exams
4. Calculate residuals for every specialist teacher's classes at KS4
5. Go much further than grade lists by providing automated performance commentaries
6. Analyse the impact of teaching on every group of learners
7. List pupils in relation to their levels of progress from key stage 2 (feature due Spring 2012)
8. Offer a real independent alternative to RAISEonline data - only much earlier
9. Provide comprehensive measures of Within School Variation
10. Allow teachers themselves to research the reasons for performance variations
11. Save an assistant head many hours of crunching numbers in Excel trying to do what 4Matrix does automatically......
...That's a start - there are many other good reasons - like 4Matrix being inexpensive - see this web site for more information.

Q. Our MIS already provides a good range of data analysis features. Do we need 4Matrix?
A. MIS suppliers are playing their part in developing new features to allow schools to make better use of the data available to them. We have not set ourselves up in competition to them; we simply offer an additional versatile diagnostic toolkit for schools to complement the tools that schools already use. We believe that schools deserve choice in the way that they use performance data, hence the emphasis that we place on importing and exporting information in a variety of formats.

Our approach has evolved from well-tested school evaluation methods and techniques, and from our experience of school inspection. These techniques are unique to 4Matrix and are being developed further by ourselves. We take pride in having originated the unique techniques used by 4Matrix, and they are our copyright, dating back to 2002. This approach has not so far been copied by other producers, and we respect this position - just as we have not sought to duplicate any existing systems or methods already available in other market products. Look-alike systems may appear in the future but 4Matrix will always be the original and best-developed example of this approach.

Q. I reckon we can do everything that 4Matrix does using Excel . . .
A. We have seen some impressive use of Excel by deputy headteachers. However, it is difficult to get much further with Excel than displaying grades and simple charts. Any system that takes the slog out of analysing results and producing basic graphs is better than having expensive school staff spending time trying to do this in Excel. And of course, 4Matrix goes much further than this.
We feel that a deputy headteacher's time is too precious to be spent creating the tools they need, and the embarrassing truth is that it is too easy to introduce appalling mathematical errors when using Excel.
We have aimed to create an indispensable professional data-handling application for data managers and those deputy headteachers with a responsibility for standards. It has been requests from deputy heads and headteachers that have driven the design of 4Matrix. We are adding new features requested by schools all the time - and these update automatically. Rather than programming Excel, we believe that a deputy head's time can be much better spent working with subject leaders on action-research developments to improve learning. 4Matrix is a highly affordable professional information management system. There is no good reason not to add this tool to your professional armory.

Q. We are likely to be inspected soon. How can we be sure if we are doing enough with our data?
A. A test question is 'How sure are you of what an inspection report would say about your school?' If you have any doubts at all then you may need to develop your data systems further. Ofsted inspection findings would never be a surprise to a school that knows itself well. 4Matrix provides the independent performance analysis needed when a school is due for inspection because it provides essential data on the performance of the current year 11 - the year that Ofsted will not have information on.
We have had many reports from schools about how 4Matrix helped them take more control over their inspection. One school resported going from satisfactory to outstanding through the way that middle leaders used 4Matrix. You can read about this by clicking this link

Q. Our results are likely to be a lot better than last year, but we are concerned that Ofsted will judge us on last year's results. Can 4Matrix help?
A. Without effective school-self evaluation that provides new evidence, the inspection report will equate closely to what it says in RAISEonline. (The TES found a high correlation.) Inspectors won't have evidence of the current performance of the terminal year (Y11) pupils and it is hard to collect through observation. 4Matrix has a powerful forecasting function. Schools can use 4Matrix to provide information about current and projected Y11 performance to set against the historical data provided by RAISEonline.

Q. What I really need is something to help me with next year's results. . .
A. One of the most distinctive and useful functions of 4Matrix is to forecast comparative achievement in future examinations. It will do this for every identifiable grouping of learners and every teaching group.

Q. Our school produces grade lists and uses target grades to focus on improvement.
    What more could we do?
A. 4Matrix goes much further in its analysis of the performance of subjects and teaching groups than just headline grades. It is a subject leader's research tool for investigating hypotheses about underachievement or high achievement in regard to a large number of factors (including gender, academic range, ethnic group etc.) as well as selected groups (like, pupils from a particular primary school, frequent absentees, differences between teaching groups, main lessons on a Friday, pupils with poor language skills, pupils in the revision club, those students who went on the Geography field trip etc.) It can help answer questions like "Do pupils with good maths skills do better in ICT?" or "Do pupils with high non-verbal reasoning CAT scores do better if they choose Diplomas rather than academic subjects"?

Q. We send our grades away and have them analysed for us. Why use 4Matrix?
A. Any system that takes the slog out of analysing results and producing basic graphs is better than school staff spending a huge amount of time trying to do this in Excel. 4Matrix wasn't designed to duplicate this basic level of analysis; it was designed to provide a flexible professional system that integrates with other systems and tools. 4Matrix works with you all through the year to analyse last year's results as well as forecast next year's results. 4Matrix is a school improvement system rather than a data analysis application.

Q. Everyone is moving to Cloud Computing. Why is 4Matrix not web-based?
A. Cloud Computing involves storing a school's data in a secure offsite server and delivering the software functionality and display through a browser.
We are looking at the possibility of providing schools with a choice as to whether to keep their data within their school or hosted by us. It is not an easy issue, especially when we are talking about using sensitive information about pupils and teachers. At the moment, 4Matrix keeps all sensitive pupil data in your school, protected by passwords that you can issue uniquely to users within your school. Someone would physically have to break into your school first in order to try to gain access to sensitive data.

The only real advantages to Cloud Computing in relation to school data systems are 1. the saving on the cost of technical staff who would otherwise have to maintain the system, and 2. the ability to use the system from outside of the school. In the case of 4Matrix, it is virtually maintenance free and only requires a technician to set it up ( a 10 minute process). In relation to 2. schools are using VPN to use 4Matrix from home and of course this also gives them access to all their other tools and files.

There are also huge advantages to 4Matrix working as an installed, multi-user application. It works with a large amount of data from your school MIS -much more than you could easily send off to a web-only company. 4Matrix makes use of student photographs, student records and timetabling and teaching group information, plus student records from previous key stages. 4Matrix will integrate seemlessly with your MIS, Excel and other data tools that you use. 4Matrix provides the user with instant access to a live database of every UK examination and National Comparative data. It will create automated reports on every subject and teaching group, and support a school-improvement process for which we have good evidence that it is improving standards in schools.

4Matrix is a serious, industrial-strength solution to data integration. Compare this to any lightweight web service that uses tick boxes to tell you what you already know, or simply provides you with a myriad pretty graphs to look at. 4Matrix is also typically half the cost of any such web-based system and is unashamably good value.

Q. RAISEonline data that the Ofsted team will use won't reflect our current intake. 
    What can we do?
A. RAISEonline data is the prime source of evidence used to support judgments about the quality of a school's provision. Unfortunately, this means that schools will often be judged on the basis of pupils that are no longer in the school.
The best way to help inspectors to evaluate the current work of the school will be to have secure, independent, quantitative, up-to-date measures of the performance of pupils in the current key stage 4. 4Matrix will help to provide this evidence. See what headteachers have said about this at this link.

Q. We are a National Challenge school.   How can 4Matrix help us?
A. 'Within School Variation' is a theme of the National Challenge programme to help schools with less than 35% A-Cs to improve. 4Matrix is a well-tested tool designed specifically to promote action-research approaches to school improvement.

Q. How are schools using 4Matrix?
A. 4Matrix supports an action-research approach to school improvement that involves all teachers. 4Matrix has been designed for school leaders and teachers to use for themselves as a process of research and development to find out where particular groups of pupils have the capacity for doing better. In the best practice seen in trials the 4Matrix application was used by subject leaders and teachers to explore and report on variation factors - with subject leaders then reporting to school leaders their plans to reduce negative variation - a process of non-judgmental internal review and development advocated by the National College for School Leadership.