4Matrix and new framework inspections Q:  "Can 4Matrix help a secondary school that is expecting a new style inspection?" A:  4Matrix has already been of help to many schools in their National Challenge work, in their journey out of special measures, or to contribute to the evidence base for current standards.  Ofsted now expects headteachers to know in detail about the quality of teaching across their school. 4Matrix was developed to support the TDA/National College approach to reducing in-school variation. Measures of consistent teaching are prime evidence for the effectiveness of school leadership. The 2009 evaluation schedule asks inspectors to evaluate two important measures:     Attainment, 'taking into account any important variations between groups of pupils,     subjects and courses, and trends over time".     Achievement, 'taking into account the quality of learning and progress for all pupils". Attainment can be measured precisely using examination results and test scores, but achievement must be inferred. Grade descriptors show how achievement should be judged, e.g. 'Achievement is likely to be good when attainment is average and learning and progress is good'. Hence, judging achievement requires a companion judgment on progress and the quality of teaching and learning. Making judgments on achievement will therefore be partly subjective. Schools can increase the certainty of a sound judgment by sharing with inspectors their own evidence of how they are assuring a consistent quality of learning, through consistently good teaching.  4Matrix will provide measures of the differences in the achievement of groups of pupils across the school. Our new '3 levels of progress' tool in 4Matrix 2010 will also forecast the percentages of Y11 pupils who are not on course to achieve 3 levels of progress by the 2010 examinations. Many successful schools already take the lead in relation to providing evidence to support inspection judgments, particularly evidence of progress and learning quality for the current year 11. The tools and techniques which schools use to analyse the data that they have available to them need to be matched to the importance of this task. A reliance on the Excel skills of the data manager is no longer enough now that a professional toolkit like 4Matrix is available. 4Matrix was developed to support a school's research into the impact of teaching. By using the current termly grades of Y11 students their comparative achievement in the 2010 examinations can be calculated and displayed.  The emphasis is on identifying negative variation and taking action on teaching which improves the quality of learning for these pupils.  By tracking the performance of the current Y11 students through to their 2010 examinations a school can show how the action that it took improved the achievements of pupils.  This constitutes significant school-level evidence of leadership and its impact on pupil achievement, and improvement over time. See this link for the draft TDA/National College guide to reducing in-school variation - which refers to the use of 4Matrix. For more questions answered, see Frequently Asked Questions