In the news

Sky News exclusive feature reports on how AS Tracking is being used by 50,000 schoolchildren at 150 schools and one says it has helped decrease self-harm by 20%. The report, which interviews students and teachers from Tendring Technology College in Essex, an AET academy of 1500 students highlights how AS Tracking is helping the right student, get the right help at the right time.

STEER organised and hosted the inaugural Education Leaders conference on April 1st 2019 at the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival entitled ['Educating the Human Mind in a Robotic Age'] featuring global experts.

Catch the videos of the expert presentations by Yale's Professor John Bargh and Oxford's Professor Stephen Roberts.

Dr Simon Walker, Co-Founder of STEER, participated in a high level panel alongside other global experts at UNESCO's prestigious Mobile Learning Week, March 4-9 2019 on the role, safeguards and considerations of AI in education.

Dr Walker is a reviewer for UNESCO's forthcoming publication chapter Policies for AI in Education.

AS Tracking gained media attention in recent national press. Principals of the Thomas’s London Day Schools Ben and Tobyn Thomas were amongst the first educators in the country to launch AS Tracking and the Footprints curriculum.

With a vision of tracking a child’s emotional development as rigorously as their academic development, Thomas’s Battersea trialled Footprints with their Year 5s back in 2012 and then AS Tracking in 2013.

Since then AS Tracking has been launched by 75 leading independent schools in the UK to safeguard the wellbeing of nearly 20,000 children. It continues to be used across the Thomas London Day Schools.

Independent Schools Magazine features a full page article on the experience of one school using AS Tracking to move pastoral care successfully from the reactive to the proactive.

Read the full article

Dr Simon and Jo Walker are keynoting and presenting 5 years of research, with over 15,000 children, to the HMC ‘Mental health: what works in schools’ Heads’ conference in London, into how to measure, track and improve the development of pupil’s soft social and emotional welfare, using AS Tracking.

The Daily Telegraph feature a strong article on AS Tracking, focusing on how the AST pioneering ‘steering’ diagnostic overcomes the filtering that undermines traditional pupil surveys. “Teachers say they are opting for the tool as a preventive measure” to combat rising pressures on children.

Read the full article

According to the TES, General Secrtary of the ATL “supports the idea of tracking pupil’s mental health in a more systematic way” and says AST is ” another tool in a school’s armoury.” Ms Bousted suggested AST “wouldn’t catch a pupil who really wanted to hide their issues”. In reply, to be precise, AST will detect 82 out of every 100 children at risk, including those trying to hide their issues.

TES Magazine features substantial item on how AS Tracking is being used to spot pupil wellbeing risks early. Harrow's experience of AST is highlighted, with quotes and stories from Pieter Bieneman of Harrow, and Chris Jeffrey of  The Grange, who is also Chair of the HMC Wellbeing Committee.

The British Psychological Society has commissioned new courses to introduce Educational psychologists to AS Tracking. ’Making visible the invisible’ and ‘Measuring the Unmeasured’ are two courses to be held in London in 2016 which explore how pupil mental health risks caused by poor self-regulation can be tracked and supported by AS Tracking, with effective results.

Monkton Combe School in Bath were delighted to welcome delegates from 25 schools across the country to learn more about Monkton’s pioneering approach to pastoral care using AS Tracking. With Sir Anthony Seldon OBE as guest speaker, the conference focussed on Monkton’s early adoption of AS Tracking which is proving to be invaluable to Houseparents in particular as a proactive, evidence based, targeted pastoral care system. We hope you enjoy this snippet below which gives a brief overview of the day.

Harrow is the latest in a string of top ranked schools to adopt AS Tracking. Eleven UK schools already use AS Tracking to reduce the risks of their pupils developing welfare concerns and embed proactive, evidence-based, targeted pastoral care, including Wellington College, Millfield and The Grange.

Thomas’s Academy in London becomes the first state primary to adopt AS Tracking. Situated in multi-cultural West London, Thomas’s Academy serves the local community and is excited about developing its proactive, evidence-based targeted pastoral care using AS Tracking.

AS Tracking is helping schools fight the rising mental health crisis, says Sunday Times front page article “At schools using the AS Tracking ‘early-warning system’ designed to try to pick up pupils at risk, the online assessment scores sound alarm bells and the school then intervenes using a range of measures to support the children thought to be vulnerable”