Drive school improvement with engagement insights
The Engagement Platform (TEP) is the leading tool for measuring and understanding school engagement, empowering leaders to collect, analyse, and act on trusted insights from their school community.
How TEP helps your school thrive
Supporting leaders to track, understand, and act on engagement data with a trusted benchmark, research-backed question set and tailored support.
Tracking & benchmarking over time
Compare your school’s engagement data with national, contextual, and trust benchmarks, tracking progress across each term.
A lead indicator for improvement
Research shows that engagement is an early signal for targeted action, helping to improve attendance, retention, wellbeing, and overall pupil outcomes.
Exploring detailed insights
Reveal patterns, trends, and challenges by exploring drivers and filtering by demographics.
Dedicated support
Our Community Engagement Team provides one-to-one support, helping you navigate the platform, surface the data that matters, and share best practice.
The value of measuring engagement
Engagement is an evidenced lead indicator of pupil and employee outcomes. Through The Engagement Platform’s validated engagement framework, precision benchmarking and termly cycles, leaders can intervene early and plan with evidence.
Improve school attendance
Engagement shifts before attendance. Precision benchmarking lets leaders analyse pupil engagement by attendance band and pupil characteristics. Risks and trends become visible while there is still time to act.
Boost teacher retention
Employee engagement moves ahead of turnover. Precision benchmarking compares employee engagement against comparable schools at the same point in the term, since engagement shifts across the year. Leaders read views on leadership, culture and buy-in in context - the basis for informed action.
See the whole school community
Pupil, employee and family engagement move together. TEP measures all three against one framework, so leaders can triangulate across groups rather than viewing in isolation – showing where to act on the cause rather than the symptom.
Engagement insights that drive school improvement
Engagement data is an early signal for outcomes. TEP helps leaders identify emerging risk before it shows in attendance, retention and attainment, target support for early intervention and track the impact of improvement over time.
Live benchmarking
Benchmarks from three national census windows, reflecting changing sentiment throughout the year for a range of engagement drivers for a comprehensive and granular understanding of the school's community.
Research-designed question sets
Fixed, regularly tested questions for different age groups and roles to generate actionable insights.
Detailed demographic breakdowns
Explore key groups, spot trends, and pinpoint priority areas, giving leaders the power to drive change in their area.
Guidance from our experts
Dedicated support from our Community Engagement team to ensure you have the best experience – from setup to post-census data reviews – supporting your school improvement journey.
Seamless integration with school systems
Compatible with all MIS systems for personalised data collection and demographic breakdowns.
Easy insight exploration
Whether you want a big-picture view or to dive into the details, the platform is easy to navigate, allowing you to switch between dashboards, drivers, and individual comments in a few clicks.
The TEP cycle
TEP supports schools and trusts through a meaningful cycle of feedback – collecting engagement data, exploring insights, benchmarking progress, and sharing practices across the community.
Collect data
- Automatically collect responses from groups via the platform in termly census windows.
- Access support resources and live tracking to secure high response rates.
- Individuals remain anonymous with data redacted for small groups.
Explore insights
- Data automatically populates your TEP dashboard, highlighting headline score and overall trends.
- Benchmark against national trends and explore key groups with demographic breakdowns.
- Expert guidance and practical resources help leaders review results, and understanding strengths and challenges.
Share and act
- Download tailored reports for trustees, governors, Ofsted, leadership teams and all employees.
- Respond to anonymous comments (from employee surveys) directly through the platform.
- Join the TEP school community to learn and share benchmark beating practices across the sector.
Frequently asked questions
Find out more details on how TEP can work for you.
The Engagement Platform (TEP) is the leading fixed measurement tool for engagement, designed to help school leaders collect, analyse, and act on insights from pupils, employees, and wider stakeholders.
Measuring engagement is crucial. Research shows that it acts as a lead indicator of pupil attendance, staff retention, and academic performance. Understanding how pupils, employees, and broader stakeholders engage with their community enables leaders to take targeted actions that prevent issues and drive lasting improvements.
TEP turns engagement data into actionable insights, helping schools boost attendance, strengthen retention, and improve wellbeing. With national benchmarks and tailored support, leaders can measure progress and focus efforts where they matter most.
TEP is built on a solid foundation of fixed, research-backed questions and three national census windows each year. This enables schools and trusts to benchmark their results against national trends at that moment in time and their own past performance, making it easier to track progress over time.
Our question sets are specifically designed for different pupil age groups, staff roles, and other stakeholders, and are regularly tested to ensure they provide reliable and actionable insights.
A standout TEP advantage is our combination of detailed data breakdowns and expert guidance. Leaders can explore their data by demographics and other groups in depth, with ongoing support from our Community Engagement team to help identify areas for improvement and share benchmark beating case studies.
TEP works across all phases and school types, including primaries (from Year 3), secondaries, and special schools. You don't need to be in a MAT or large school to get the full benefit of TEP. TEP provides contextual benchmarks for all school types and takes the heavy lifting away from the process of collecting and reporting on stakeholder feedback. Take a look at some of our case studies to see how individual schools utilise TEP to the full.
Our question sets are based on existing research and psychometric testing conducted during pilot and trial phases. They are fixed to ensure focus and reduce survey fatigue, but schools can add 1-2 custom questions specific to their needs. This approach keeps response rates high and results meaningful.
There are three national data collection windows each year – November, March, and June. This gives schools timely insights to act on throughout the year.
Yes. TEP integrates with all major MIS platforms, allowing personalised data collection and detailed demographic breakdowns without disrupting workflows. Moreover, we provide full onboarding and ongoing support.
Our Community Engagement team supports onboarding, setup, staff briefing, post-census data analysis, and action planning to help schools maximise their engagement data.
Unsubsidised pricing starts from £804 for individual schools for an initial three-term commitment. This includes pupil and employee engagement insights, as well as family engagement and leadership and governance modules in pilot phase. Every partner works with a designated TEP contact, who provides support throughout setup, data collection, analysis and action planning. Subsidies are currently available for eligible schools, and additional discounts are available for trusts joining with multiple schools.