Getting Started with Filters and Groups

Insight makes it easy to look at different sets of pupils and then compare them in various ways. It's the same method throughout the system, so it's quick to pick up.

You can Filter Pupils to tell Insight which children you want to see. That might be the whole school, all your SEN pupils, just your class or a more specific subset. Filters can also be combined, so you can view just Year 6 SEN pupils, for example.

Some reports also let you Group Pupils, so you can make comparisons between the children you're looking at. If you're looking at your class, you might group by gender to compare your boys and girls, or by an intervention you're running to see its impact.

Getting Started

The Tables report is a great place to get the hang of choosing and comparing sets of pupils. You'll be able to see the list of pupils changing as you apply and remove the filters and groups.

Navigate to Cohorts, then Tables, to get started:


Choose Pupils by using Filters

Your starting point in Insight is always an academic year. If no other filters are on, you'll be looking at all pupils in school for the selected year:


Insight remembers which filters and groups you used last, and may already have a Year Group filter turned on to help you. If your toolbar looks different than the one above, don't worry! You can always remove anything else that's there by clicking the symbol.

You can narrow down from looking at the whole school by clicking Filter Pupils. Let's choose the Year Group filter as an example.


This adds a drop-down menu which you can use to switch between different year groups:


Once you've chosen a year group, you'll be looking at that year group for the selected academic year:


You can use the Filter Pupils menu as many times as you need to narrow down the pupils you're seeing. Let's try adding a Gender filter to see the 2016-17 Year 5 boys:


You can remove a filter by clicking the symbol next to it:


Now we're looking at all the 2016-17 boys:


Compare Pupils by using Groups

On some reports you can sort the pupils you're looking at into various groups, to make comparisons.

Earlier, we used the filtering options to view all the 2016-17 boys. We can divide up that cohort by clicking Group Pupils. Let's split them into year groups as an example:

Filter and group by

Now the 2016-17 boys are grouped by their year group, so we can compare reception boys, year 1 boys, and so on:


You can change how the pupils are grouped by clicking the drop-down menu, which currently has Year Group selected. Try clicking the menu to change to Pupil Premium:


Now the 2016-17 boys are grouped by Pupil Premium instead.

You can remove a grouping by clicking the symbol next to it:
Tip: Adding and removing filters and groups doesn't change your data in any way, so feel free to explore the different options to see what's available.

Further Reading

For more information on how specific Filters and Groups work, please visit our Filters and Groups guides.

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