Introducing Deep Field Reports: A new way to answer the questions that matter most to your school
- Adam Sturdee
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
In 1995, NASA pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a patch of sky so small it would be covered by a grain of sand held at arm's length. To the naked eye, there was nothing there. After ten days of continuous exposure, something extraordinary came back: nearly 3,000 galaxies, some of the oldest and most distant ever observed, all hidden in what had appeared to be empty darkness.
The Hubble Deep Field did not show scientists something new about the universe. It showed them something that was always there, hidden beneath the surface of a wide-angle view. The power was not in the telescope. It was in the decision to look more closely at one specific place.
That is precisely the idea behind what we are launching today.
The Constellation Dashboard gives you the wide view. A Deep Field Report turns the lens on a single patch and reveals what the overview could never show.
What are Deep Field Reports?
Starlight schools already have access to the Constellation Dashboard: an anonymised, aggregated overview of coaching trends across your school, updated weekly and monthly. It gives leaders a reliable read of the broader picture.
Deep Field Reports go further. They are bespoke, on-request analyses drawn directly from your school's transcript archive, focused on exactly the slice of data that matters to you right now. A department. A year group. A session type. A particular question about teaching practice across a defined period of time.
You tell us what you want to understand. We focus the lens and Starlight produces a written report that surfaces patterns and evidence from across your transcript data in response to that specific question.
What a Deep Field Report might explore:
- Questioning and dialogue patterns across a time period or year group
- Trends in teaching practice over a defined period
- CPD impact: how coaching conversations are reflected in classroom practice
- An evidence base ahead of, or to support you during, an Ofsted inspection
- Specific pedagogical themes you want to explore across your staff
Private for teachers. Anonymised for leaders.
Like everything in Starlight, Deep Field Reports are built around the principle that teacher trust is non-negotiable. Individual teacher reports remain private to each teacher. Deep Field Reports follow exactly the same governance as the Constellation Dashboard: all data is fully anonymised and aggregated. No individual teacher is identified in any report. Leadership sees patterns across the school, never a profile of a specific person.
This is not a surveillance tool dressed up in better language. It is a coaching intelligence layer, built for leaders who want to make better decisions about professional development without compromising the culture of trust that makes Starlight work in the first place.
Why we are starting here
We are honest about what this is at this stage: a bespoke, manually produced service. We are not yet building a self-serve Deep Field Reports feature in the platform. We are doing this deliberately.
Before we automate anything, we want to understand what questions actually matter to school leaders. What do you want to know? What would change a decision about CPD, coaching or curriculum if you had the evidence? The schools that work with us now will directly shape what Deep Field Reports becomes as a product feature.
This is the same approach we took with Starlight itself: validate the value first, then scale it. What starts as a conversation with a small number of schools becomes a feature that works for all of them.
Exclusively for pilot schools, for now
Deep Field Reports are available initially on a limited, exclusive basis to Starlight pilot schools only. Capacity is genuinely constrained at this stage, and we will be working with a small number of schools to develop the service carefully before opening it more widely.
If your school is already using Starlight, contact your lead at STAR21 to make a request. If you are not yet a Starlight school but want to be considered for the pilot cohort, we are accepting a limited number of expressions of interest.
Request a Deep Field Report for your school
Available exclusively to Starlight pilot schools and a limited number of new applicants. Tell us what question you want answered.
Spark Insight with Starlight today and discover what your evidence base has been holding all along.
Book a demo to see Starlight in action: https://starlightmentor.com/demo-request
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The Insight Engine is written by Adam Sturdee, co-founder of Starlight, the UK’s first AI-powered coaching platform, and a senior leader with responsibility for teaching, learning and coaching. This blog is part of a wider mission to support educators through meaningful reflection, not performance metrics. It documents the journey of building Starlight from the ground up, and explores how AI, when shaped with care, can reduce workload, surface insight, and help teachers think more deeply about their practice. Rooted in the belief that growth should be private, professional, and purposeful, The Insight Engine offers ideas and stories that put insight—not judgment—at the centre of development.
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