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  • How well do you really know your students?

    Pre-conference Workshop
    11 March 2027 | 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM

How Well Do You Really Know Your Students?

Your school holds more data on its students than ever, and the hardest question still goes unanswered: who are they?

This day is about closing that gap, and about going home able to close it again without me.

Workshop participants will play a school through a year and watch what their data choices cost. They learn a method for asking students directly, then use it with real students the same day. They rebuild one thing their own school sends out – a report, a dashboard, a referral form, a handover sheet – so that it can carry what they heard. And the day closes as a recorded episode of the Data Talks podcast, with participants as the credited guests.

Everything in the day travels. You’ll leave with the method, the protocols, the materials and the permission to run all of it in their own school, with their own students, the week they return.

Key Details

Date and Time

Thursday 11 March 2027

9am – 4pm

Location
Hong Kong

Investment

$325USD (on/before 30 September 2026)
$350USD (on/before 30 November 2026)
$375USD (on/before 31 January 2027)
$399USD (after 31 January 2027)

Prices are subjected to 5% registration fee.

Register Now

Who Should Attend?

  • Data and assessment leaders.
  • Heads, deputies and vice principals.
  • Wellbeing, safeguarding, inclusion and counselling leads – the day sits directly alongside the conference’s mental health strand.
  • Middle leaders who carry data upwards and downwards.
Alert Alert

Any Pre-requisites?

Pairs from the same school get the most from it. No technical background needed. No preparation required beyond bringing one document.

Key Takeaways

  • What the students said. Both labs are recorded in full, and every delegate is in the room for both. Two weeks later, everyone receives the complete anonymised record as a single document.
  • The game. Print-ready files, to run with staff, a department or a leadership team.
  • Their own artefact, rebuilt. Prototyped, stress-tested by peers, ready to pilot – plus the constraint set and stress-test protocol, which work on any document their school produces.
  • A published Data Talks episode. Credited, shareable, and theirs – with their own Monday commitment inside it.

How Does The Day Look Like?

  • 09:00 - OPENING

    The question that runs through everything: what do we actually know about the children in our care, and how would we know if we were wrong? And a provocation frenzy, prodding and poking delegates to question what they do and imagine even better ways.

  • 09:45 – ACT ONE: THE NINETY-FIVE PER CENT

    A custom-built board game, made for this day and played nowhere else. Every table is given a school and one child inside it, and plays the year out. Which data to buy, which to record, which to pass on, which to leave alone.

  • 10:45 – BREAK

  • 11:00 – ACT TWO: THE VOICE LABS

    A Voice Lab is a structured conversation with students about their experience of school and, in this instance, about the data their school has on them. A small group, one facilitator, a sequence of prompts, and a discipline of silence – the facilitator’s job is to ask and then stop talking.

  • 12:30 – LUNCH

  • 13:30 – ACT THREE: THE REDESIGN

    Every school sends things out about its students. Reports, dashboards, transition documents, referral forms, parents’ evening structures, tutor handover sheets. Most of them were designed a long time ago by someone who has left.

  • 13:30 – ACT THREE: THE REDESIGN

    Every school sends things out about its students. Reports, dashboards, transition documents, referral forms, parents’ evening structures, tutor handover sheets. Most of them were designed a long time ago by someone who has left.

  • 15:30 – DATA TALKS LIVE - FINAL SHOWDOWN (OPTIONAL)

    The day becomes an episode: one hour, recorded for publication as a bonus episode of the Data Talks podcast, with delegates as the credited guests. What was played, what the students said, what was rebuilt – and what each delegate will do differently on Monday, said aloud, on the record, to a room that will still be at the conference tomorrow to ask about it.

    Participants are encouraged to join, may opt-out if not interested.

Presenter

Matthew Savage

Director of The Mona Lisa Effect

Matthew is a CIS-affiliated consultant, an Affiliate Member of SENIA International, co-host of the Data Talks podcast, and Founding Facilitator of DALIS (Data and Assessment Leaders in International Schools. He helps schools “Know better”, exploring ways to “do data differently” such that every student can “be seen, be heard, be known and belong”.