Datafication of education and automated inequaities
Some musings this week on datafication and Fischer Family Trust Data (FFTD). The Fischer Family Trust describes its mission as to 'help children achieve their very best’ by ‘providing expert data and literacy tools to support schools globally in improving pupil outcomes’ (fft.org.uk, 2017) and has developed a data system for pupil performance which is now used by the majority of schools in England and Wales. The system (known as FFTD) calculates estimated attainment targets for school children by analysing the performance data of students from the previous year with the same prior attainment in their previous nationally benchmarkable Key Stage assessments (for English secondary school pupils this would be Key Stage 2), the same gender, and the same month of birth. The analysis generates predictive targets for pupil attainment at the next nationally benchmarkable Key Stage, which for English secondary school students would be Key Stage 4 (GCSE). The target looks something like t...
