From the Head of School

Zettabytes of Information

In 2023, around 147 zettabytes of data were created on the internet.

When I was growing up - a million, with just six zeros, seemed like a very large number; a billion, with its nine zeros, occupied a distant horizon of bigness.  Now billions are common, and even the twelve zeros of a trillian are not that remarkable.  A zetta has an incredible 21 zeros following its starting 1, that is: 2 to the 70th power; a billion trillions.   A Harry Potter is about 1 million bytes - so 147 zettabytes could produce 147,000 trillian of them.  And that is what is created on the internet each year.

My point is that we have more than enough information and we have confusingly large amounts of it coming at us every year. Despite its ubiquity, I still have the habit of my generation of paying too much respect to any information that comes my way, especially more formal information.

And it is in that frame of mind that I joined a science department meeting earlier this week to discuss the results of last month’s MAP tests.  These tests create all kinds of information about mathematics, literacy and science: we can examine attainment or growth, see change over time and compare cohorts, or evaluate the results in terms of world averages or schools in Europe or schools of our type.  We can write an analysis or draw graphs.  

It is easy for the conversation to be dominated by the data, and then by what the data says about us as teachers and as a school: to want the data to show certain things, to celebrate when it does, worry when it doesn’t; to explain, or explain away.

Fortunately, I was reminded by the science teachers as to the real point of MAP or indeed any educational information, which is to use it to understand individual students, not as a single point of truth that explains a particular ability, but as part of a wider dialogue.  No set of data sums up a child or their potentials, but each byte of it can contribute to a fuller understanding - particularly when the data is shared with the student themselves, not a summative judgement but a conversation enricher.  

Elementary parents receive report cards today.  All the time you are hearing about grades or getting other forms of information about your child’s progress.  But it is not the bigness of the data that matters, but the quality of the conversations you have with the information in front of you.  It’s the child who is important, not the numbers.