Introduction
This document is intended to be a guide to help schools implement GO 4 Schools, whether you have purchased the starter version or the full version and whether you’re a Primary School or Secondary School. It outlines tasks to perform – and why - in an order that should form a logical sequence for most schools. Next to each task is an indication of the anticipated effort. This document is mainly intended for those with School Manager access to GO 4 Schools, or those who attended the management section of the training session.
Initial Set-up
This section should help you to organise some of the data in GO 4 Schools into a more familiar structure. More information can be found in the specific article linked.
Task | Purpose | More information | Estimated effort |
Setting up access control for Staff | To provide staff with the access they need to perform tasks in GO 4 Schools. For instance, those responsible for creating markbooks will need to be set up as ‘Curriculum Leaders’ in the system. | 10-15 mins | |
Setting up School Calendar
| To indicate the start and end of the school’s academic year, and the days when the school is closed etc. Also, if a 2-week timetable is in use, to indicate week 1 and week 2 so that the correct timetables are displayed to staff and students. Also timetable visibility can be set here. | 5 mins | |
Define your Grade settings
| It’s possible to change the default grade names used in GO 4 Schools to more meaningful terminology for staff, students and parents. For instance, ‘Current grade’ could be changed to be ‘Working at grade’. Schools are also able to select their preferred progress and target grades, control which grades are enabled and who they are visible to and editable by. Decisions made about the grades you will use and the language you will use for them is usually something that needs deciding by the SLT. It is a good idea to make these decisions ASAP as it will give GO 4 Schools a more ‘familiar feel’ to staff if they see language with which they are familiar. | 10-15 mins | |
Tracking model | Set up your tracking preferences for each year group by selecting the preferred progress grade and target grade. For example, the current grade may be used for live tracking at KS3 but at KS4 a teacher projected grade can be used for the main progress grade. Selecting the Preferred scale sets up how you want to the residual to display – Index is the default and options to display residuals to staff, parents and students. The residual setting will display in a range of outputs for analysis. | 10 mins | |
Set up Custom Student Attributes
| To record additional demographic information about students such as feeder schools, reading ages, ability, etc. This information can then be selected for display as a pop-out in the markbooks, and for use in the analysis of specific data such as attainment and attendance (if purchased). This step can be performed at any time, but it is worth spending time considering which additional classifications of students would be beneficial in the analysis of your statistics. | 10 mins per attribute | |
Uploading Documents
| Add individual student documents such as IEP’s so they are easily accessible to all staff to view and download via the markbooks and the student pages. Set up of document types can be done at a later date. | Document Manager’s Guide | 1 min per document type |
Granting Access to Students
| To allow students to log into GO 4 Schools from home and view their progress and online versions of their reports. To do this, students should have a school email address and their UPN should be stored in the MIS. The email address would then need to be mapped to the students UPN for identification. | 5 mins, once file has been prepared |
The Curriculum Structure
This section should help you to organise subjects into a familiar departmental structure and also to ensure the curriculum taught is accurately represented.
Task | Purpose | More information | Estimated effort |
Creating feed rules
| Feed rules allow you to manipulate subjects/groups in GO 4 Schools to ensure the curriculum is represented accurately. For example, for secondary schools, splitting English into English Literature and English Language, or splitting Triple Science into Biology, Chemistry and Physics. You can also add extracurricular subjects that don’t appear on your timetable, such as Music Club or Photography etc. For primary schools you can use feed rules to create ‘subjects’ within GO 4 Schools for tracking purposes such as Reading, Speaking and Spelling. | 2-3 mins per rule | |
Assigning new subjects to departments | As part of your pre-training set up steps, you should have moved subjects out of the ‘Unknown’ department into your school’s departmental structure. When new subjects are created using feed rules you will probably want to move these out of the ‘Unknown’ department too (their default location) using the same steps.
| 2 mins |
Setting up markbooks
This section should help you to start creating your online markbooks for each subject. If you have the full version of GO 4 Schools and full markbooks, we believe that schools feel the most benefit from providing access to Heads of Department or Subject Leaders allowing them to create and manage their own markbooks. However, some schools choose to start slowly and control access allowing just a few key staff members to perform this task. If you have the starter version of GO 4 Schools the Data team may wish to perform this task.
Task | To achieve | More information | Estimated effort |
Assigning qualifications to markbooks | Assigning the qualification to a subject via the markbook ensures that the correct grading scheme is applied for that qualification and that the appropriate performance points are used. Once the qualification is assigned, the system can start including the subject in the wide variety of statistics available on the site.
For formal qualifications i.e. GCSE’s we suggest you check the QAN codes for the subject to ensure these are correctly assigned.
When adding the qualification, you will need to decide the which grade schemes you wish to use; whole grade, fine grades and low/high grade options are available for formal qualifications. | Introduction to markbooks and subjects Please note: the method of assigning qualifications to markbooks differs between the full version and the starter version. Both methods are covered in detail. | 1-2 mins per markbook |
Checking assigned qualifications | The Subjects and Qualifications page (Curriculum > Subjects and Qualifications) shows information of the qualifications selected for each subject in each year group. From here you can check which subjects are counting towards statistics such as Ebacc and GCSE passes. You will also be able to check if any of the qualifications selected are due to be withdrawn by Ofqual/QiW. | 20-30 mins |
Uploading Grades
This section will help you to begin adding grade information into GO 4 Schools. The grades will then feed into the various statistics the system produces, giving you an instant analysis of the data.
Task | To achieve | More information | Estimated effort |
Uploading KS2 Grades for Secondary Schools
| Once uploaded, KS2 information will be available to all staff within the progress section of every markbook. The grades will also automatically start contributing towards statistics such as Levels of Progress and Expected progress from KS2 for KS4 students. It is also possible to use KS2 grades to calculate an average baseline grade which can be automatically applied to core and none-core subjects for all students. | 20 mins once file is prepared | |
Uploading Target Grades
| Target grades are used to populate the left-hand side of the online markbooks, providing staff, students and parents with an indication of what students are aiming for. This can also be used to measure a student’s progress from the start of the year towards their target. This information is also fed into the statistics and the charts available on the student page. | 30 mins, once file is prepared | |
Uploading GL Assessment data
| GO 4 Schools supports the display of various GL Assessment data including CAT4, PASS, PTM, PTE and PTS. This data can be uploaded as pre-defined student attributes and selected to be shown in the markbooks as well as the on the student page providing staff with more information about students in one centralised place. We recommend you edit the file to key data sets prior to upload. | 30 mins | |
Uploading Baseline Grades
| Uploading baseline grades allows you to record student’s start-of-year grades. You may wish to upload baseline grades for individual subjects rather than use the calculated average derived from the KS2 Grades (especially for primary schools). For instance, an average of English and Maths may not be a suitable baseline from which to track progress in Art or P.E for secondary schools. Baseline grades will then be used to populate the flight path charts to show students’ progress year on year in each subject.
| 5 mins per file |
Preparation for your first set of Progress Reports
This section should help guide you through setting up the reporting module in readiness for your first set of reports. Reports can be used to take a data snapshot of subject grade data with the starter version or full written reports with report attributes if the Report module has been purchased.
Task | To achieve | More information | Estimated effort |
Attaching the School Logo to the report cover page
| To add school branding to the students, take home reports. If you haven’t done so already, please mail a large, high-quality image of the school’s logo to the GO 4 Schools team to have added to your reports. | Please email your customer support representative. | 2 mins |
Setting up report attributes *Available for full version of the Progress Reports module only
| You may wish to show additional information on reports such as a student’s effort in class or attitude to learning. These can be set up in advance as report attributes to allow teachers to simply pick pre-defined values from a drop-down list for each student. | 5 mins per attribute | |
Creating Comment Banks *Available for Full version of the Progress Reports module only
| Schools can create pick-lists of pre-written comments which can be made available to all staff when writing reports, further reducing the amount of input for teachers. Schools can choose to allow teachers only to select text from the comments banks or give them the ability to use free text as well as or instead of comment banks. | 10 mins plus depending on the number of comments you wish to add | |
Reviewing process | You may like to think about how the review process will work at your school. There are two stages to the review process; the first stage is designed for teachers to check each other’s reports and flag up any discrepancies. The second review is designed for Report Manager’s to do a final check before the reports are published. Some schools simply have Report Managers spot check the reports, others have Head of Departments check each individual report for their department to finalise the second review. Note that report managers and curriculum leaders can monitor progress by staff using the progress bars on the report management page. | This may be completed over a number of days, depending on the individual schools review process | |
Granting Access to Students
| To allow students to log into GO 4 Schools from home and view their progress and online versions of their reports. To do this, students should have a school email address and their UPN should be stored in the MIS. The email address would then need to be mapped to the students UPN for identification. | 5 mins, once file has been prepared | |
Granting access to Parents
*Please note: parents are only able to log in if the Parental Engagement module has also been purchased.
| To allow parents to view their child’s up-to-date progress online and to view or download progress reports. Parent email addresses are taken from the schools MIS to generate user accounts in GO 4 Schools. You may wish to start populating the MIS with updated parent email addresses and parental responsibility in preparation for ‘going live’ to parents.
We have a standardised document designed to explain the site to the parents, including logging in and what each section on the page refers to. If you would like a copy of this document to edit and send out to parents please email your GO 4 Schools Customer Service Representative. | This may take a few hours to enter or update parent email addresses in SIMS, but is then automatically updated to GO 4 Schools | |
Publishing to parents and students
| Progress reports can be made available online for students and parents (if applicable) after publication. Once reports are published, schools can also choose to notify parents of the reports availability with an automatically generated email. | 2 mins |
Behaviour Module (if purchased)
This section should help you to set up the behaviour module initially, including creating the events you wish to record and the associated actions.
Task | To achieve | More information | Estimated effort |
Identify the language you would like to use | To standardise the terminology used to display to staff, parents and students through-out the module. For instance, you may prefer to use ‘Choice’ or ‘Reward’ rather than ‘Event’, or ‘Positive’ rather than ‘Good’. If you would like to specify your own terminology, please contact us and we will be happy to set that up for you. | Please contact the support team via the support tickets available on the Help and Technical Support section of the website. | A few days |
Creating ‘Groups’ of Events
| To organise behaviour event types into appropriate groupings. Each type within the group should represent events with the same score. | 10-15 mins | |
Creating event types
| To enable staff to record the types of events in line with the school’s behaviour policy. Once the event types have been added to GO 4 Schools, they will appear as options in a drop-down list for staff to select, making recording an event quick and easy. | A few minutes per event type | |
Creating immediate and follow up actions
| To provide staff with actions to individual types of behaviour events. Creating and assigning actions to an event type means that all staff can consistently follow up an event in line with the school’s behaviour policy. | A few moments per action | |
Displaying behaviour data to students and parents
| The school can choose whether to display behaviour information on the student and parent pages. | 1 min | |
Notifying parents
(Please note: This only applies if the school have the parental engagement module.) | GO 4 Schools can send automatic emails to parents notifying them of behaviour events raised for their child. The emails can be set to generate daily or weekly.
Behaviour information can also be viewed by students and parents on the Mobile app if this has been purchased alongside the parental engagement module. | 1 min | |
Enable detentions | Detention functionality can be enabled to manage detentions and notify parents and students. Detention sessions can be set up and students allocated for registers for staff. | 10 minutes |
Attendance Module – Tier 1 (if purchased)
This section will help you to prepare for the enabling of the attendance module. Please note the attendance module is not automatically enabled as part of the initial installation as we require a full set of attendance data first to ensure that the statistics shown are accurate.
Task | To achieve | More information | Estimated effort |
Flushing a full set of attendance marks | To ensure that GO 4 Schools has a full and completely up to date set of attendance data from your MIS for use with the statistics and analysis tools, please re-send your attendance registration and lesson feeds from the start of the academic year. The schools Network Manager will be able to assist with this task. | 15 mins | |
Specify attendance bands | Attendance bands can be used to automatically group students into defined bands based on their session attendance, helping you to monitor and improve overall attendance. Please email the attendance bands you would like to use to your GO 4 Schools Customer Service Representative. For example: Band name: On target Minimum percentage: 97% Maximum percentage: 100% Colouring: Green | 5 mins | |
Set the school attendance target | To show a school–wide attendance target which can be displayed against your current attendance percentage. For instance, 97% | 1 min | |
Set up pre-defined focus groups for analysis | As discussed in the first section of this guide it is possible to select student attributes to be used as focus groups for statistics and analysis. For instance, to show attendance percentages based on pupil premium or house group. | 5 mins |