Data-driven decision-making impacts how multi-academy trusts (MATs) operate, empowering them to deliver more effective safeguarding, resource allocation and student support across all their schools. In today’s complex educational landscape, the ability to analyse trends, compare performance and act on real-time insights is essential for MAT leaders overseeing multi-site organisations.
Addressing Safeguarding Challenges in MATs
The size of MATs can present considerable challenges in ensuring effective safeguarding.
With MATs covering multiple school locations, often serving thousands of students and employing large numbers of staff, there can be discrepancies in the safeguarding measures implemented across each school. To maintain the highest levels of protection for children across the entire trust, a unified and cooperative approach is essential.
In a large-scale organisation with multiple sites, safeguarding can present a variety of unique challenges beyond those of the typical school setting, including:
- Collaboration and information-sharing across academies
Clear communication is vital for safeguarding, yet managing diverse communication styles and approaches across multiple schools makes timely and effective collaboration difficult.
- Continuity between technology and systems
Differences in tech platforms and IT policies across schools can result in critical safeguarding information falling through the cracks when systems fail to integrate properly.
- Managing data security and privacy
MATs face unique challenges in securely sharing sensitive safeguarding data while ensuring compliance with data protection laws, especially when dealing with disparate systems or different storage methods.
- Safeguarding analytics and identifying trends
The overwhelming volume of safeguarding data, often scattered across various platforms or in different formats in such a large organisation, makes it hard for MAT leaders to identify trends or risks among students, increasing the risk of children falling through the gaps.
Why Data-Driven Decision-Making Matters
Operating a multi-academy trust requires precision, foresight and responsiveness to safeguarding concerns, all of which hinge on the ability to harness and interpret data effectively.
For MATs, relying on data means moving beyond anecdotal evidence and isolated incidents. Instead, leaders can identify patterns across schools, spot emerging risks and benchmark performance. This approach supports:
- Resource optimisation
Distributing resources equally across multiple schools is a constant challenge. Data insights allow trust leaders to allocate funding, staff and other resources based on actual needs. Comparing pupil data across schools can highlight areas requiring additional support, ensuring resources are directed where they will have the greatest impact. - Accountability and improvement
Centralised data analysis enhances transparency and accountability. Trust leaders can track progress and set measurable goals while monitoring their impact. Clear visualisations make it easier to engage stakeholders and demonstrating how data-driven decisions are fostering improvement across the trust. - Compliance and reporting
Meeting the reporting requirements of regulatory bodies can be time-consuming without robust tools. Data analytics systems streamline compliance by centralising information, enabling MATs to respond to inspections or audits with confidence and efficiency.
Introducing CPOMS Insight for Data-Driven Trust Leadership
CPOMS Insight is an advanced safeguarding analytics solution that helps MAT leaders analyse data, identify patterns and uncover trends in student wellbeing. By centralising and visualising key safeguarding information, CPOMS Insight enables proactive and data-driven decision-making to better protect students at risk and help ensure no one slips through the net.
Key Benefits of CPOMS Insight
- Better decision-making through visualised data
With clear dashboards and interactive reports, CPOMS Insight transforms complex data into meaningful visuals and graphs. This helps safeguarding teams, trust leaders and MATs quickly grasp patterns, assess risk and prioritise support for at risk students. When it’s easier to understand the data, it becomes easier to act on it, leading to more proactive interventions and more informed, strategic decisions.
- Unified data across each setting
CPOMS Insight brings together safeguarding and wellbeing data from across multiple settings into one accessible platform. This unified view helps MATs, local authorities and trust leaders spot trends, identify gaps in provision, and support a more coordinated and strategic approach to pupil support. By eliminating fragmented data silos, leaders can make quicker, more joined-up decisions that lead to better outcomes for students.
- Flexibility for a wide range of roles and use cases
Whether you’re a DSL, a MAT executive, or a local authority team member, CPOMS Insight adapts to your role. The platform’s customisation options mean you can view the information that matters most to you and build dashboards around your responsibilities. This flexibility supports a wide range of safeguarding and wellbeing objectives—from school-level analysis to visibility into usage of resources across your trust.
- Customisable dashboards powered by Microsoft Power BI
CPOMS Insight’s interactive dashboards are powered by Microsoft Power BI, a globally trusted platform for data analysis and visualisation. With a proven track record across both public sector and education settings, Power BI gives MATs and local authorities confidence in the platform’s ability to deliver secure, scalable and high-performing data tools. Intuitive graphs and filters help trust leaders analyse complex, raw data, so they can prioritise support efficiently.
- Scalable, high-performance data analysis
CPOMS Insight is purpose-built to handle large data sets efficiently, making it ideal for MATs, local authorities, and other multi-site organisations.
Tools like CPOMS Insight ensure trust leaders are equipped to turn raw data into actionable, impactful decisions. To learn how the platform can support safeguarding at scale in your organisation, book a free demo today.
