Early intervention tool aimed at turning school results around

New data sharing arrangement helps The Smith Family better support students In short: The Smith Family is now able to track in real time the attendance and educational outcomes of the children they are supporting in Tasmania. It means help can be given to students when problems arise, rather than waiting months for the next school report. What's next? Students experiencing disadvantage are more likely to need additional support with their learning, and early intervention is seen as key to changing educational destinies. Mum Gabrielle Kneebone knows it can be hard to keep track of her three children's school admin. "I work part time … caring for my husband and looking after three spicy children. It is hard." The family have been supported by The Smith Family for about six years. The organisation has helped fund things like laptops, SIM cards and provided educational support. "It's nice to have a little bit of extra [money] and know someone's got your back," she said. To help The Smith Family keep across how her kids are going in school, parents like Gabrielle have had to send through copies of their child's school reports. But that meant long lag times in identifying if students on the program were having issues. Real-time tracking of kids needing support The Smith Family has now been given access to real-time education data on the students they support in Tasmania. The Education Dashboard provides information on things like attendance and academic performance. "It means we can intervene early when things start to become challenging for a student,"The Smith Family chief executive officer Doug Taylor said. Students needing support can access the organisation's learning clubs or individual coaching. More than 4,600 Tasmanian families on low incomes receive support from The Smith Family, and the majority have authorised for their child's dashboard data to be shared with the organisation. "Thirty per cent of young people who are disadvantaged need additional support with their learning," Mr Taylor said. Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland have also provided The Smith Family with real-time access to Education Dashboards. Director of Lifting Literacy with Tasmania's Department of Education, Jen Ashton, said agreements to allow data sharing can be complicated. But she hopes the dashboard will allow for greater individualised support for students who need it. "Not just with their literacy and numeracy, but the whole child,"she said. Celebrating attendance wins Sarah Coker is a family partnership coordinator with The Smith Family. She said one family she worked with had become disheartened by their school's push for 100 per cent student attendance. "This family felt judged and not supported,"Ms Coker said. But she was able to see on the dashboard that there had been improvements in the student's attendance, which the family found encouraging. "We actually saw a 40 per cent increase in attendance with that child that year," Ms Coker said. "Every per cent that they get is a change to the child's future." Getting children back on the learning bus McKinnon Foundation education director Jordana Hunter said when students start to fall behind in class, it can be increasingly difficult to catch up. "If there are gaps in their learning, it can be much harder to keep up with curriculum content as it gets more sophisticated each year," she said. She said tracking individual students and offering early targeted help, like one-on-one or group tutoring, can change educational destiny. "Hopefully it's a short and sharp intervention that can get them back on track and benefit from that high-quality classroom teaching,"Ms Hunter said. She said the majority of students from disadvantaged backgrounds can be supported to reach the proficiency benchmark.