Introducing Alps Ascent: Key Stage 3 Tracking and Analysis

Introducing Alps Ascent: Key Stage 3 Tracking and Analysis

Product Overview

Alps Ascent is a brand new Key Stage 3 tracking and analysis platform designed to help schools monitor student progress and attainment across the Key Stage 3 curriculum.

Built on a flexible start band model, it gives KS3 leaders a clear and simple, data-driven picture of where students are at any point in the year — and how they are progressing over time.
The platform supports bespoke assessment language and custom start bands, meaning it can be configured to match your school's existing model — whether you use Key Stage 2 scores, teacher assessment, CAT4, or another approach to establish starting points.

Key Stage 3 Curriculum Variation

As part of our initial research for this product we asked current Alps customers about their Key Stage 3 curriculum models. The responses were varied as expected exemplifying the range of ways in which different schools and colleges track across Years 7 to 9. 

Our vision for our Key Stage 3 product is to build a bespoke platform which was able to encompasses as many curriculum models as possible. To find out more about the models available in Alps Ascent, please see our article: Alps Ascent KS3 Tracking Systems.

Tracking Systems Overview Video



Alps Ascent Overview Video

For an overview of the Alps Ascent platform, please see our video guide below:


Key Benefits 

  1. Flexible and school-ready: Start bands, qualitative descriptors, and the number of monitoring points can all be configured to match your existing assessment model
  2. Whole-school and individual insights: From cohort-level trends on the dashboard right down to a single student's subject-by-subject journey, Ascent supports decision-making at every level.
  3. Progress over time: Trend data across monitoring points allows you to see whether your interventions are working and how performance is shifting across the year.
  4. Early identification of students needing support: Sortable student data makes it straightforward to spot who is falling behind, helping leaders to prioritise conversations and interventions.
  5. Designed for Key Stage 3 leads and Heads of Year: The platform provides key information in an easy and accessible format enabling pastoral and curriculum leaders to act quickly and confidently.

    

Main Analysis Pages

Alps Ascent provides four key analysis views, each designed to support staff at different levels:

1. Dashboard

The Dashboard gives an at-a-glance snapshot of your cohort based on the latest monitoring point. It can be filtered by year group (Year 7, 8, or 9, or all together) and displays:
  1. Total number of students and subjects entered.
  2. The average qualitative grade across all students and subjects (e.g. Working At).
  3. The average progress difference score — a numerical indicator of how far above or below their start band students are performing on average.
  4. Demographic insights, giving context about the composition of the cohort across performance groups.
  5. A performance distribution graph showing how student progress is spread across qualitative descriptors, trended across all monitoring points in the year.
  6. An entry profile showing the number of entries and the proportion sitting above target, at target, and below target.
For more information, please see our article: Alps Ascent Dashboard

2. Subjects

The Subjects page breaks performance down by curriculum area. For each subject you can see:
  1. How entries are distributed across qualitative descriptors at the current or any previous monitoring point.
  2. The average grade and average progress difference score for each subject.
  3. A trend view across all monitoring points, allowing you to see how subjects are progressing across the year.   
  4. A subject-level bar chart positioning each subject against the zero line (Working At), making it easy to identify subjects performing above or below expectations at a glance.
For more information, please see our article: Ascent Subject Analysis

3. Students

The Students page gives a whole-cohort view of individual student performance. For each student you can see:
  1. Whether they are working above, at, or below their start band across their KS3 subjects.    
  2. Their average progress difference score across the curriculum.
  3. Sortable data to quickly surface the students who may require support or intervention.
For more information, please see our article: Ascent Student Analysis

4. Student Card

Clicking on any student opens their individual Student Card, which provides:     
  1. Contextual information about the student.   
  2. A graph showing how their overall progress difference score has changed across monitoring points in the year.     
  3. A breakdown of their performance by individual subject and how that has changed across the year.
For more information, please see our article: Ascent Student Analysis