From Insight to Impact: Using data to support at-risk students
Understanding "At-Risk Students": Identifying and Supporting Vulnerable Learners
The term “At-Risk” is often used to describe students or groups of students who have a higher probability to experience academic failure or dropping out of school. In educational settings, the term "at-risk" encompasses various circumstances that may hinder a student's academic success. There are a multitude of factors that could place a student “at-risk.” Notably, most "risk factors" are situational rather than inherent traits. These challenges can range from homelessness, incarceration, teenage pregnancy, serious health issues, domestic violence, or other conditions, or it may refer to learning disabilities, low test scores, disciplinary problems, grade retentions, or other learning-related factors that could adversely affect the educational performance and attainment of some students. Educators use this term to identify students who exhibit behaviors indicating a higher likelihood of failure or dropout.
Since the scope of “at-risk” is so varied, categorising a student “at-risk” has to be done with precision and clarity to render the term meaningful, especially in technical and policy context where it determines special educational service allocation. Definitions of "at-risk students" can cover a wide array of characteristics, including physical disabilities, health issues, truancy, family background, parental factors, and language barriers. A student's perceived risk status is often related to external circumstances rather than their academic capabilities. For instance, attending an underfunded school with subpar teaching quality can contribute to absenteeism, academic struggles, and dropout rates, highlighting the impact of environmental factors on student outcomes.
Why Focus on At-Risk Students?
Society as a whole experiences an overall uplift when every member gradually moves in an upward direction. Focusing on at-risk students promotes equity and success in education and enriches the makeup of communities and society as a whole. It is important to address specific challenges like socioeconomic factors, health issues, and learning disabilities and provide personalised and targeted support and interventions that can help students overcome barriers and develop essential skills needed to achieve their academic and personal goals. The following are a few of the benefits of focusing on at-risk students:
Promoting Equity, Opportunity, and Balance: Most at-risk students come from a disadvantaged background and face systemic barriers to opportunities that limit their ability to access education and resources. By focusing on these students, schools cultivate an inclusive culture, thereby leveling the playing field and enabling all students to have the opportunity to thrive academically.
Addressing Root Causes of Academic Struggles :The cause of poor academic performance for at-risk students goes beyond their academic struggles. It could be due to a variety of social challenges like poverty, lack of social support, family safeguarding issues, and mental health challenges. By addressing these causes and challenges, the school is enabling a framework of wider societal impact, creating a pathway for at-risk students to succeed.
Improving Student Outcomes : By providing support and early interventions, schools can help at-risk students to improve their overall academic achievement, thereby reducing their dropout rates and improving graduation rates. This improves the overall school climate and creates a sense of inclusivity in the school and community that the school serves.
Enhancing School Performance : When schools take a proactive approach to supporting at-risk students, they can improve overall student outcomes and raise school performance metrics. This can lead to increased graduation rates, improved test scores, and a more positive reputation for the school.
Investing in the Future : By providing at-risk students with the support and resources they need to succeed, schools are effectively investing in their future and the future of their communities. These students are more likely to become contributing members of society, contributing to the economic and social well-being of their communities.
Want to learn more about the challenges some students face in accessing education? Explore our blog post on "The Hidden Crisis: Addressing Children Missing Education" for further insights.
The Crucial Role of Data in Identifying At-Risk Students
In order for at-risk students to improve academic performance and improve their situation beyond academics, early intervention and support is crucial. Data and analytics can play a fundamental role in making sure detection of trends corresponding to academic performance, attendance, and behavior is tracked and notified to the respective educators to intervene proactively and provide support.
There are a multitude of factors that can place a student “at-risk.” Understanding those factors and having access to the data is crucial in helping to proactively monitor and provide support and intervention to improve their outcomes. Analyzing data to understand trends and patterns from the variety of contributing factors helps proactively monitor students who are deemed at-risk as well as those who no longer are at-risk. The following factors and their trends help identify students at-risk:
Academic Performance – Data and trends related to the students test scores, grades, their course completion rate give a picture of students who may be struggling academically.
Absenteeism – Trends and patterns on persistent absenteeism or unauthorised absenteeism can reveal issues with bullying, family problems, and unearth students experiencing social or emotional challenges.
Safeguarding Concerns – Data relating to a student safeguarding helps in protecting students from physical, verbal, and mental abuse, thereby helping students to focus on their academic performance and improving outcomes.
Behavioral Issues – Monitoring behavior-related indicators such as negative points, tardiness, and disciplinary incidents can reveal underlying issues of bullying and unusual family circumstances.
Health and Wellbeing – Administering data related to social and emotional wellbeing, surveys, or assessments can assess and identify students in need of additional support.
English Language Learners – Students with different linguistic and cultural barriers may struggle with their performance, so tracking performance trends particularly related to ELL students helps in providing the support needed early on.
Social Impediments – Data and trends related to participation in activities outside of school, friendship groups, and online activities could reveal patterns or sentiments which need additional and specialised support.
To monitor and identify at-risk students effectively requires a thorough and holistic understanding of their individual circumstances, needs, and weaknesses. Ensuring a robust data analytics platform that caters to viewing a student's holistic performance across all the relevant factors helps educators with the information accessibility they need to provide early intervention and support the students need.
Want to learn more about how Deesha's comprehensive data analytics platform can provide this holistic view and empower your educators to effectively identify and support at-risk students? Explore our solutions today.
Leveraging Predictive Analytics to Develop Effective Interventions
Predictive Analytics or Predictive AI encompasses a variety of statistical techniques from data mining, predictive modelling, and machine learning that analyse current and historical data points and trends to predict or forecast about the future.
Machine learning algorithms such as decision trees, logistic regression, and neural networks can analyse multiple variables to predict student outcomes and flag at-risk individuals. Due to the nature of the factors that contribute to students being at-risk, it is important to focus and create predictive analytics use cases that take the data points relevant to the factors that could have a contributing effect and build the prediction. This prediction helps education leaders to continuously monitor and analyse the trend to build early interventions. Early interventions could also include targeted support that can reduce the length of time the student is at-risk.
Continuously monitoring student progress and adjusting interventions based on predictive analytics or data analysis ensures that support strategies remain effective and responsive to students’ needs.
From Data to Actionable Impact: Leveraging Deesha's Machine Learning for At-Risk Student Support
Deesha goes beyond simply identifying at-risk students by showing the numbers and contributing factors. Our platform empowers educational leaders to continuously and proactively monitor student progress, ensuring the time a student remains at-risk is minimised and the support provided is precisely tailored to their individual needs.
What is Deesha?
The word ‘Deesha’ (D-IY-SHA) means an insightful vision. Deesha was born from a key understanding: educational institutions are rich in data but often struggle to efficiently transform it into informed, strategic decisions that drive growth. We created Deesha to streamline manual data collection and analysis, effectively bridging the gap between data availability and easy data accessibility.
Deesha offers a comprehensive suite of nine integrated modules covering the entire spectrum of educational data and analytics:
Student Information
Admissions
Marketing
Learning
Survey
HR
Functional Evaluation
Health and Safety
Finance
Schools can adopt Deesha incrementally, starting with the module that addresses their most pressing data challenges.
Ready to see how Deesha's machine learning models and comprehensive suite of modules can transform how your organisation identifies and supports at-risk students? Request a personalised demo today!
Deesha's Tailored Predictive Models for Enhanced Student Support
Deesha offers two core predictive models: predicting attendance and predicting admissions.
However, our powerful data intelligence platform is also capable of creating bespoke predictive models tailored to your specific school demographic, profile of students, environmental and societal profile, teachers' profile, vision, and mission of the school. The list of data points that inform the model for predictive outcomes can be as bespoke as needed.
Yet, when focusing on students at-risk, certain factors remain consistently important, such as behaviors, attendance, grades, and social engagement. Tracking and monitoring these factors that directly impact student outcomes and incorporating these data points into the predictive models allows for a degree of standardization across all schools. Deesha's platform is designed to build and adapt the data input of these models to tweak and change according to each school profile. This enables the creation of a more personalized model that precisely meets your school's unique needs in identifying and supporting at-risk students.
Empowering Educators to Rewrite the Narrative for At-Risk Students
The journey of an "at-risk" student doesn't have to be defined by their challenges. By embracing the power of data and predictive analytics, educational institutions can gain a profound understanding of individual needs and proactively implement effective interventions. Moving beyond reactive measures to a future where every student, regardless of their background or circumstances, is equipped to thrive is within our reach.
Deesha offers more than just data; it provides the insightful vision needed to transform that data into tangible support and positive outcomes for your most vulnerable learners. Our bespoke predictive models and comprehensive platform empower educators to identify risks early, personalise interventions, and ultimately rewrite the narrative for their at-risk students.
Ready to unlock the transformative power of data and predictive analytics in supporting your at-risk students? Book a personalised Deesha demo today and discover how we can help you create a more equitable and successful future for every learner.