The student comes first.Data belongs first to the student it describes. Assessment is how we come to know a child; data is what we keep of that story: a set of fragments, never the whole of it.
Vision
A generation of school leaders with the courage, and the permission, to reimagine data and assessment, with the whole child always at the centre.
Mission
DALIS gives data and assessment leaders in international schools a room to question orthodoxy together, test what a more honest and inclusive data ecosystem could look like, and carry that courage back into their own schools.
Values
We hold data lightly.A score is a partial view, not a verdict, and it means little without the stories around it. Built well, dashboards, transcripts and reports can all help us see the whole child.
We watch for what goes unmeasured.So much of what matters – learning, progress, wellbeing, belonging – happens outside the assessment spotlight. So we stay curious about what we can’t see.
We take the system seriously, and its limits and side effects even more so.Boards, inspections, accreditation, examinations, university admissions: all matter. None of them justifies a practice that harms a child.
We look at whom the orthodoxy fails.Conventional assessment and reports, honour rolls and prizegivings: too often, these are built with one kind of student in mind. We build ours for every student. That’s our work, not a footnote to it.
A student’s worth has nothing to do with the grade in front of them.We build our practice so that every student knows this.
Some of this will feel more true after a year in the room than it does today. That’s fine. Like a student’s story, this is a journey. It is not something to be recited on arrival.
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