What are Compass evaluations?
Compass evaluations enable schools to quickly and easily evaluate their careers activity against the eight benchmarks of best practice – known as the Gatsby Benchmarks.
The Compass evaluation feature was built in partnership with the Gatsby Charitable Foundation to help Careers Leaders easily discover their institution’s strengths and find areas for improvement.
Completing a Compass evaluation is simple: answer the questions in the evaluation and Compass+ will calculate your evaluation results for you.
What types of Compass evaluation are there and which one is right for me?
There are three types of Compass evaluation:
- Compass evaluation for Schools
- Compass evaluation for Post 16
- Compass evaluation for Special Schools.
If you use Compass, you can access the School, Post 16 or Special Schools evaluation.
If you have upgraded to Compass +, you can only access the School and Special Schools evaluations.
View the questions for each evaluation type here > Compass evaluation type questions.
If you're in a SEND setting and you're not sure which Compass evaluation type to use, this article from our Compass Help Centre might be useful > I'm not sure I have the right Compass evaluation type for my institution, what should I do?
What are the benefits of completing a Compass evaluation?
- Monitor your institution's progress towards achieving the eight Gatsby Benchmarks
- Compare your progress against previous Compass evaluations
- Identify areas for improvement, targeting groups and supporting individual learners
- Use your evaluation results as the basis for building your careers programme
- Compare your progress against other institutions in your area/CEC Hub.
How long does it take to complete a Compass evaluation?
A Compass evaluation takes about half an hour to complete. Also, if you start an evaluation and need to come back to it later, you can save your progress anytime and finish answering the questions when you can.
How does Compass+ help me to understand my Compass evaluation results?
- Detailed results page
For each Benchmark, click 'Show details' to view a detailed breakdown of your results:
The detailed breakdown will show you assessment areas that you are achieving, areas that are in progress and areas that need addressing.
There is a link to the Resource Directory at the bottom of each detailed breakdown signposting you to relevant resources that may help you to improve your Benchmark scores.
Click 'Hide details' to collapse the detailed breakdown and return to your results overview:
- Dashboard Data visualisations
An at-a-glance view of your Benchmark scores, and how your institution compares to others.
You can also see how your i9nstitution's latest results compare to past evaluations, and see how your planned/completed activities might improve your Benchmark performance.