Gold in them there hills? Extracting and using data from existing sources

Abstract

Data residing in institutional and system‐level record systems are often under‐exploited as a resource for decision‐making. Whilst the data might neither have the characteristics, nor meet the quality demanded, of formal research projects, their relative availability offers advantages to the policy‐maker and practitioner. This article illustrates with a number of examples the potential of available data for informing policy and practice at different levels within an education system.