What It Delivers
A joined-up view across attendance indicators, local authority context, and supplier-delivered integration so teams can act from shared evidence rather than disconnected updates.
What Is Project Compass?
Project Compass is a DfE attendance readiness programme that helps regional and local teams identify risk earlier, coordinate interventions faster, and protect pupil outcomes before key term checkpoints.
Why This Week Matters
Decisions on scope, spend, and sequencing this week directly influence autumn-term readiness and the confidence leaders have in intervention plans.
The Situation, At A Glance
Three connected realities are shaping every next move: financial pressure, delivery risk, and pupil-outcome expectation.
What Is Creating The Pressure
Cost growth is concentrated in data integration and supplier dependencies. A blunt scope cut lowers spend quickly but introduces downstream attendance and safeguarding readiness risk.
What Needs To Happen
Hold the autumn-term line, recover value through supplier renegotiation, and align finance, data, and operations on one recommendation leaders can back.
Project Compass - Five Demo Moments
Each step shows how Copilot helps build a defensible recommendation across Microsoft 365 surfaces in one decision-making flow.
Catch Up Across Email, Teams, And Meetings
Will needs the complete picture before recommending anything. Copilot summarises the last seven days and groups signals by urgency, owner, and impact.
PROMPT
"Summarise everything I missed on Project Compass in the last 7 days across email, Teams, and meetings. Give me a simple, easy-to-understand summary, then highlight and prioritise any actions for me."
Will starts from a shared baseline instead of piecing together updates manually.
Model Budget Recovery Trade-Offs
Will opens the tracker to test practical recovery paths while holding readiness outcomes in view.
PROMPT
"If we hold the autumn term readiness date, what budget recovery options do we have, and what are the trade-offs? Create a Scenario Modelling tab to show this."
The team sees cost, schedule, and service impact in one frame.
Draft The Executive Update
Will turns evidence into a concise recommendation and immediate next actions for sponsor review.
PROMPT
"Draft an executive-ready update with recommendation, rationale, and immediate next actions."
No blank page, faster alignment, and clearer decision framing.
Convert The Update Into Leadership Narrative
Will converts the written brief into a crisp slide storyline for decision makers.
PROMPT
"Turn this update into a five-slide storyline for leaders: context, risk, options, recommendation, and asks."
The leadership conversation centres on choices, not slide production.
Lock Immediate Actions And Owners
Before the meeting closes, Will confirms the first actions and owners so recovery starts today.
PROMPT
"Create a 7-day action list with named owners, dependencies, and check-in dates based on this recommendation."
Execution starts with clarity, not another round of ambiguity.
People Who Shape The Outcome
Each person carries a different pressure. The final recommendation has to work across finance, data, operations, and sponsorship.
Will Beringer
PROGRAMME MANAGEROwns the recommendation and balances fiscal control with attendance-outcome integrity.
Kai Carter
DFE FINANCE PARTNERFrames overrun implications and the practical boundaries for recovery options.
Omar Bennett
DATA INTEGRATION LEADOwns critical dependencies across MIS feeds and local authority data pipelines.
Corey Gray
SRO SPONSORNeeds a defensible recommendation with confidence in execution before term starts.
Try These Prompts In Your Own Work
Use these after the demo to recreate the same style of decision support in education delivery and assurance workflows.
"Summarise everything I missed on Project Compass in the last 7 days across email, Teams, and meetings. Give me a simple, easy-to-understand summary, then highlight and prioritise any actions for me."
"If we hold the autumn term readiness date, what budget recovery options do we have, and what are the trade-offs? Create a Scenario Modelling tab to show this."
"Draft an executive-ready update with recommendation, rationale, and immediate next actions."
"Pressure-test the document generated in Prompt 3, assuming the persona of a project sponsor."
"Turn this update into a five-slide storyline for leaders: context, risk, options, recommendation, and asks."
"Create a 7-day action list with named owners, dependencies, and check-in dates based on this recommendation."
Bring Your Toughest Challenges
This demo shows how Microsoft 365 Copilot accelerates expert judgement. It does not replace it. The same approach applies across DfE planning, assurance, and delivery.