Data Detective
Turn school data into leadership insight — safely.
Eight sessions that take you from a vague data question to a personal investigation system you keep on your desk. Built around the Prepare → Prompt → Pattern → Present framework. Every session contributes one piece to a one-page Investigator's Bench Card you print and pin above your desk; a signed Privacy Pledge at Session 2 unlocks the analysis sessions.
By the end, you'll be able to —
- Frame any data investigation around the decision it will inform — before opening the spreadsheet
- Sign and live by a personal privacy pledge that gates every AI interaction with school data
- Screen any dataset for trustworthiness on four dimensions before drawing conclusions
- Name the 3–5 recurring data investigations you run all year, and write the prompts that answer them
- Distinguish a real pattern from a confident-sounding artefact using four pressure-test checks
- Run a five-minute verification with the colleague closest to the data before acting
- Translate one verified finding into a safe-to-fail 30-day experiment with a real kill switch
- Leave with an Investigator's Bench Card — pin it above your desk and re-read every time a new question lands
8 modules · 32 lessons
Self-paced lessons designed for the gaps in your week. Every lesson ends with a prompt template you can paste into ChatGPT or Claude before lunch.
- Frame · Hook · Leadership use · Framework · AI role · Concept8 min
- Prompt & Judge · Context interview · Save AI output · Judge locally8 min
- Test & Decide · Scenario judgment · Knowledge check4 min
- Bench Update · Investigation context · Reflection · Reusable move5 min
- Frame · The Four Golden Rules of school-data privacy8 min
- Prompt & Judge · Why this gate exists (no AI prompt — the pledge is the work)6 min
- Test & Decide · Scenario judgment · Knowledge check5 min
- Bench Update · Privacy Pledge (4 rules + signature) — unlocks S3-S86 min
- Frame · Provenance · Completeness · Recency · Ground-truth8 min
- Prompt & Judge · Data quality interview · Worst-case follow-up8 min
- Test & Decide · Scenario judgment · Knowledge check4 min
- Bench Update · Your data quality habits · Reflection · Reusable move5 min
- Frame · The five question types · The recurring-investigation insight8 min
- Prompt & Judge · Question-type sorter · Overlap follow-up8 min
- Test & Decide · Scenario · Human Judgment Check · Knowledge check4 min
- Bench Update · Your recurring questions · Reflection · Reusable move5 min
- Frame · The three things every reusable prompt names8 min
- Prompt & Judge · Prompt-pattern critic · Counter-explanation · Canonical analyse-data prompt10 min
- Test & Decide · Scenario · Knowledge check5 min
- Bench Update · Your three named prompts · Reflection · Reusable move7 min
- Frame · Cohort-size · Collection-rhythm · Segment-stability · Falsifiability8 min
- Prompt & Judge · Output pressure-test · Most-likely-risk follow-up8 min
- Test & Decide · Scenario judgment · Knowledge check4 min
- Bench Update · Your pattern-vs-noise routines · Reflection · Reusable move5 min
- Frame · Your verification network · The five-minute brief8 min
- Prompt & Judge · Verification brief drafter · Tighten-to-80 follow-up8 min
- Test & Decide · Scenario judgment · Knowledge check4 min
- Bench Update · Your verification contacts + judgment routine · Reflection · Reusable move5 min
- Frame · The nine elements of a safe-to-fail experiment8 min
- Prompt & Judge · Experiment designer · Missing-failure-mode follow-up10 min
- Test & Decide · Scenario · Human Judgment Check (pre-action) · Knowledge check5 min
- Bench Update · Your 30-day experiment · Reflection · Reusable move7 min
Built for educators who actually use this.
Designed for the people doing the work, not the people writing policy about the work.
Save $10 — get all three Lead with AI programmes (Data Detective, Crisis Management, Clone Yourself).
$20 · all three · lifetime access
Questions, before you commit
Yes, with discipline. Session 2 is a Privacy Pledge you sign in your own words — four Golden Rules (never enter identifying data; always anonymise; check your school policy; verify AI output). Every prompt in the course that touches data auto-includes a privacy preamble. Sessions 3 through 8 unlock the moment you sign your pledge.
Yes. The course assumes spreadsheet-literate but not analyst-trained. The Prepare → Prompt → Pattern → Present framework and the worked-example school (Northcombe Academy) carry the technique. If you can export a CSV from your MIS, you have enough skill to start.
The framework is MIS-agnostic; Northcombe Academy uses SIMS in the worked example, but the four-dimension data-quality screen and the prompt patterns transfer cleanly to any system that exports CSV.
The free tier of ChatGPT or Claude is enough. The course is copy-paste — you write the prompt, run it in your preferred tool, paste the response back. Session 2's privacy pledge covers which tools are appropriate for which work.
Fully redesigned (2026). Eight sessions instead of twelve, with a cumulative Investigator's Bench Card you keep using long after the course finishes. Every session contributes one piece; you walk out with a personal investigation system in your own words, with your named prompts ready to copy. The Privacy Gate is now a signed pledge rather than a quiz — a commitment, not a test.
Data Detective is the analytical foundation. Crisis Management and Clone Yourself sit on top: once you can interrogate your data, you can write better stakeholder comms and automate the admin that surrounds them. The bundle covers all three for $20.
Ready to lead with the data?
Eight sessions to a Bench Card you actually use. Pin it above your desk this month.