This week we will find out whether United Learning has won the award for ‘Digital Innovation’ at the MAT Excellence Awards. It is always affirming to be shortlisted in recognition of our work, but this nomination represents not just the value of data aggregation at scale in our Trust, but also the power of working collaboratively across trusts to create a data architecture that everyone can benefit from and build great analytical tools with.
Over the past few years, we have been on a journey to move beyond fragmented data systems towards something more coherent, more responsive, and ultimately more useful. Like many trusts, we had historically invested heavily in data systems and dashboards. On the surface, much of this worked: questions could be answered, reports could be produced. But behind the scenes it often required significant manual effort to bring data together, with analysis often taking weeks, and insights reaching teachers and leaders too late to have the biggest impact.
That gap between “having data” and “having insight” is a defining feature of the current education system as our data becomes distributed across all the ed tech tools that we use. Schools are surrounded by information but lack the infrastructure to connect it in a way that supports confident, timely decision-making.
Our data strategy therefore focused not on incremental improvement, but on rethinking the foundations. This has meant investing in open, shared approaches to data architecture, including the Open Education AI (OEAI) framework. At its simplest, OEAI provides a common structure through which data can be brought together, governed transparently, and used to generate insight at pace.
At United Learning we made a conscious decision to shift our thinking away from data as a service to be delivered, towards it being a product to be built and improved over time. Our United Analytics platform (a SharePoint site with collections of PowerBI embedded pages, all powered by the OEAI architecture within Microsoft Fabric, our data lake) is being developed iteratively, with modules released in stages, a product backlog emerging, and training and support embedded into our toolsets and provided at each module launch.
As a result, United Analytics is quickly becoming an established part of United Learning and is changing the way we think about and use our data. The demand for better, faster, and more connected insight is growing - exactly the outcome we hoped for. And we know it is making a difference in our schools. Hot off the press, our central office survey results showed a 20percentage point increase in terms of data expertise in the team since 2023 and a customer service score of 87%. One Headteacher said “the systems that have been built are phenomenal and I can't stress enough how much the service has supported me this year.”
Finally, being shortlisted for this award is not just recognition of what has been built by our fantastic data team, but of the direction of travel. Without the wider OEAI community our progress would have been slower, and our solutions would have been weaker. We need shared standards, open infrastructure, and a commitment to collaboration. With those things in place, all trusts can benefit from the same insights that we can.
And in that sense, this is just the beginning.
Lauren Thorpe
Chief Transformation Officer