Times Two Training

Microsoft Excel for Heads of Department

Making data management easier

A one day hands-on course to give busy Heads of Department relevant key skills in data management.

Previous praise for this course:

• It was a refreshing change to attend a course that was useful and was able to support all abilities and competences, and build on these.
• Can’t recommend this course highly enough!
• The coursebooks will become invaluable to me as a source of continued professional development. It will become a learning tool for me to continue at my own pace.

Target audience:

Heads of department and/or aspiring Heads of Department. The course will also be of relevance to school assessment co-ordinators, and any member of staff who is compiling and processing large amounts of pupil data using Microsoft Excel. The course is suitable for beginners and more advanced users.

Course outcomes:

On this hands-on course participants will choose their own starting point based on their current skill and knowledge level. The course is structured around a range of tasks of increasing complexity, which authentically reflect the data management challenges a Head of Department will face. The generic outcomes which are available are to learn how to:

• Construct and format useful spreadsheets.
• Monitor whole class performance.
• Monitor individual pupil performance.
• Monitor a single cohort over a number of years.
• Monitor successive cohort performance.
• Use formulas for useful and time-saving functions.
• Save time and energy.

Some specific Excel skills which will be covered are:

• Formatting the spreadsheet to improve its on-screen appearance and functionality.
• Sorting and filtering lists of data.
• Page setup to set parameters for printouts.
• Basic mathematical and statistical formulas.
• Autofill functions to save time and effort.
• Conditional formatting to automatically highlight data on the spreadsheet.
• Lookup tables to convert data from one form to another (eg. marks into grades)
• Linking spreadsheets within a workbook.
• Use of pivot tables to monitor performance using a range of variables (eg. by teaching group, gender etc).

Participants are invited to bring along their own laptops and their own data in order to be able to immediately apply the skills they learn to their own work.

About the course leader:

John Walker is a former Assistant Principal, Science College Manager and Head of Science at a large community college. Effective data management was one of the key factors John attributed his department’s significant improvement to, and was important in allowing more time for the important strategic aspects of running the department. John now divides his time between independent training and consultancy, and the National Science Learning Centre, where he leads professional development for teachers. His previous work has involved a significant amount of training of specialist HLTAs, as well as enrichment and outreach training.