The development of Sleuth is driven by working closely with our users to deliver new features and enhancements that our users feel will benefit them most. We are pleased to announce that our latest release of Sleuth continues in this vein. 

Significant among the new features is the introduction of class groups. This now provides the ability to record behaviour and assign actions to every student in a class, all in a single step. Using class groups also allows staff to review the behaviour of their incoming cohort prior to each lesson so that they are aware of what has taken place in preceeding lessons.

The following are the highlights of the user requested improvements in the latest release of Sleuth:

Class Groups

Quicker Data Entry

Behaviour Points

Effective Home-School Relationships

Getting Good News Home

Managing Referrals

Presenting data in a VLE or Parent Portal

New Reports & Reporting Features

[ Features added in last major release ]

Using Class Groups

All your class or teaching groups will now available for use in Sleuth. This makes a significant difference to the speed with which you can create new incidents and also to the detail with which it is possible to search and report on recorded incidents.

• Creating Incidents - Students can be selected for data entry based on the class group they are taught in. Sleuth determines the class group from the information on the incident screen, i.e. period, subject and reporter, all of which can be defaulted by each staff member. Individual, multiple, or all, students in a class can be selected in one step.
• Searching - By including a particular Class Group in a MySearch, prior to each lesson staff can review the behaviour of the incoming cohort. As a result staff are always aware of what has already happened today and can provide continous support for students as well take action consistent with that of colleagues.
• Reporting - It is now possible to analyse behaviour for individual class groups within a subject, crucial information for timetabling and planning student groupings and staff allocation.

Class group data will be automatically loaded into Sleuth and maintained by the Sleuth Importer.

Even Quicker Data Entry

It has always been possible in Sleuth to record several students involved in the same incident but we have made this process even quicker by allowing users to select as many students as necessary from any Class, Year, House or Tutor Group and apply the same action to every selected student in one step.

A Select All feature also means actions can be assigned to a whole group very quickly.

Behaviour Points

We have extended the use of points so that they can now be assigned to an individual behaviour or an action. The behaviour points reports will do the calculation and accumulation of points as before

This feature is particularly useful in a cumulative reward system, where periodically a points total counts toward a reward (positive action), and for schools that use Sleuth to monitor student progress in each lesson, it means that to award points no action has to be assigned, simply select the behaviour(s) and points will be assigned.

Effective Home-School Relationships

Parents can have their own login to Sleuth. The school has complete control over the data available to parents and how it is presented. Parents are only permitted to review behaviour for children in their care.

Where additional support is necessary, individual parents can be provided with more detailed information and additional reports to more closely monitor the progress of children in their care, for example when a child has a behaviour contract or difficulty in a particular subject, progress reports can be made available in order that parents are informed and can better support the work of the school.

Getting Good News Home

It is now possible for any action (sanction or reward) to automatically trigger an alert to parents/carers. This is a very effective method for getting good news home. This is achieved currently using an email (free option) and will be soon be extended to SMS (low cost option). Each sanction/reward can have a different alert template personalised to the student and using the incident details. The alert can go to each parent/carer set-up to receive communication from school via email.

The use of alerts, and the content of alert templates, is controlled by authorised users so information can only be sent where appropriate.

Alerts can be used an an alternative to, or as well as, the existing automatic document feature (e.g. letters home) in Sleuth.

Managing Referrals

Sleuth is already widely recognised for its ability to manage the entire referral process. We have now added additional features in this area to support quicker data entry and greater consistency.

• Auto-Referrals - An action can be auto-referred to the correct member of staff based on the action and their position. For each year group, house group, tutor group and subject a member of staff can be nominated. An action is setup to automatically refer to the generic Head of Year, Subject Leader, Head of House or Tutor. When recording an incident, when this action assigned to a student the correct staff name is substituted as the 'Referred To' member of staff.
• Auto Follow-up - The Follow-up flag can now also be set to default based on the action. For referrals to colleagues this means you can be sure actions are marked for further action.
• Staff Alert - Any action can automatically trigger an email alert to the Referred-To member of staff. This could be an email relayed to a mobile device for on-call staff. Each sanction/reward can have a different alert template personalised to the student and using the incident details.

These features not only speed-up data entry but also encourage greater consistency by ensuring the correct member of staff is referred incidents appropriate to their role.  If required the referee can also be notified via email when a referral is made.

In Sleuth the use of email alerts is completely configurable.  An email is only sent when necessary according to your policy and referral system.  This avoids swamping staff with emails by sending multiple copies of emails that require no action by the recipient. 

Presenting data in a VLE or Parent Portal

Sleuth has been developed to support all Virtual Learning Environments (VLE's) and Parent Portals. The Sleuth Application Programming Interface (API) allows Sleuth data to be displayed directly in other products.

Schools with their own skills can develop their own solutions in their VLE/Parent Portal by taking advantage of the interoperability of Sleuth, we are happy to advise where we can. For those that don't have the necessary IT skills, we are doing the work for you by working together with the major providers to develop solutions to display Sleuth data in Frog, Insight from TASC and also SIMS Learning Gateway (SLG) on Sharepoint.

New Reports & Reporting Features

A number of new reports have been added to Sleuth to allow more detailed analysis. We have also added options for reports to remove page breaks and to hide students' details, for example when using the data with third-party organisations.