Data Managers - what role do you report in too?

[Ditto]

I'm interested knowing which role you report in to?

[SpreadsheetJockey]

At school level, usually an assistant head with responsibility for data in some way e.g. "Achievement" or "Standards" or whatever. At Trust level, it seems to be a bit random still.

[coconurtaler]

Deputy head, with responsibility for data.

[SB9876]

Assistant Head with responsibility for Inclusion, Attendance, Behaviour and Attendance.

[SchoolDM]

Assistant Head with responsibility for data, IT systems etc.

[Ditto]

Thanks for all the replies. A job I have seen advertised has the role reporting into the Exams Officer which I haven't seen before.

[SB9876]

That is a bit odd. Exams Officer to me is focused solely on one data area, whereas Data Manager can have responsibility in some way, for the full breadth of data areas. If one was to Line Manage the other, i'd expect the Data Manager to line manage the Exams Officer - but more likely them to be separate and both managed by a member of SLT.

[KElliott]

My Line Manager is the leader of assessment, part of extended SLT, and they direct work relating to assessment, but for anything else the Business Manager.

[SpreadsheetJockey]

You sometimes get this when a Trust has come in, made the data manager redundant and merged the two roles into "Data and Exams Officer" and then everyone has realised a few years down the line, that exams managers do not have the same type of expertise as data managers, nor the time to do assessments, analysis, timetabling etc. on top of the regular exams role. So they appoint a subordinate "data officer" or similar, to pick up anything their exams person doesn't want to do - as schools tend to panic at the prospect of losing their exams manager these days due to lack of experienced replacements. A few years after that you find the exams manager has become the "systems lead" or whatever, and now they have an exams officer and a data officer below them. Thus resulting in the Trust turning two experienced roles into three underpaid newly appointed roles... I feel the most sorry for the people in stage one of this though - that "Data and Exams Officer" cost-saving role is impossible.

[AlistairB1983]

Agree with the comments above. My previous school I was initially employed as the "Data & Examinations Manager", which also encompassed Cover Manager as well. Which was fine when I first joined as we only had up to Year 10s present, as it was a new school. However by the time I got up to Year 12s being present it was starting to become an issue - although this was around the time COVID hit, so it's difficult to say with any certainty. Anyway the idea always was for me to eventually have someone else come in and take one of those jobs off of me and depending on who we brought in would depend on which (data or exams) they took off me. If they'd taken Data off me, they would have reported to me as the Exams Officer, same as with your advert.

 

However I left before they could actually get anyone in (they have done so now, about 2 years after I left - wife still works there!) to go to a job where my 3 roles were being handled by 3 different people, so I only had to pick up the Data Manager one as we already have existing Exam Officers and Cover Managers. Incidentally, I do line manage the Exams Officer, so could foresee a situation where the reverse could be true for the right people.