Dr Robin Nagy is an independent Educational Consultant, founder and director of EffortTracking.com and director of Academic Profiles assisting schools in the collection and analysis of data on student effort and achievement, and advising schools on best practice in implementing data-driven student growth strategies. Dr Nagy also works as a Research Officer at the School of Education, University of New South Wales, and will be conferred as an Adjunct Lecturer in December 2025. After graduating from Bath University in the UK, with Honours and Masters’ degrees in Electronic Engineering, he worked in industry as a Firmware Development Engineer before deciding to pursue a career in teaching.  Dr Nagy worked as a high-school teacher of Mathematics for eight years in the UK (at University College School, North London Collegiate School, and City of London School), before moving internationally to teach in Thailand for four years and then to Sydney, Australia, where he now lives. He was a classroom teacher of Mathematics for over twenty years and also held senior positions as Dean of Students at Redlands School, Sydney (4 years), Housemaster at Cranbrook School, Sydney (6 years) and Head of Year at Bangkok Patana International School, Thailand (4 years). After leaving teaching, he worked for two years as Professional Learning Consultant for the Mathematics Association of New South Wales and has presented at numerous state, national and international conferences on Mathematics Education, Effort, and Effort Tracking. His work on Student Effort-Tracking drew interest and attention both nationally and internationally while he was still a full-time high-school educator and he was the recipient of an Outstanding Session Award at the 2017 Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER) Excellence in Professional Practice Conference (EPPC). He presented his practitioner work at the 2017 Educator Summit in Pennsylvania, hosted by Angela Duckworth's organisation: Character Lab. From 2020 to 2024, he completed a PhD in Educational Psychology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, supervised by Scientia Professor Andrew Martin and Associate Professor Rebecca Collie. His doctoral dissertation was on The Role of Effort in High School Students’ Academic Development: A Longitudinal Perspective in Mathematics and English.

Quotes about Effort Tracking:

"Robin Nagy’s  work is a fine example of a teacher iteratively refining a formative assessment tool with and for colleagues, to provide a practical aid to assess “student effort”. His work is grounded in the practical realities of the classroom, backed by statistical analysis, and creates a compelling visualisation, serving as the springboard for a mentoring conversation with students of all abilities."

Professor Simon Buckingham Shum
Director, 
Connected Intelligence Centre 
University of Technology Sydney

"The effort tracking data has been really useful in understanding how students are progressing, in terms of dispositions which we know will best set them up for the future. Having a student self-reflection piece in conjunction with their teachers' rating is a powerful tool for forward-looking, data-driven coaching conversations."

Sean Corcoran 
Head of Secondary School,
SCECGS Redlands, Sydney

"Feedback is essential to learning, and immediate, specific feedback is the best kind there is."

Professor Angela Duckworth
University of Pennsylvania and
Founder and CEO of Character Lab

"Many young people suffer from ‘the smart curse’. This insidious mindset says “school is easy for me because I’m smart”. This faulty logic, sometimes perpetuated by well-intentioned parents and teachers, is catastrophic to long term success. Inevitably, young people with the smart curse struggle when they hit senior secondary school; academic reward has always come without effort and they have no coping strategies when the going gets tough.  Effort Tracking overcomes the smart curse in a powerful way; I’m very excited about the applications of Robin’s work in helping the next generation of students understand the strong causation between effort and achievement."

Bill Hansberry 
Educational Consultant and Author,
Director, Fullarton House
Adelaide, SA

"The great work being done by effort-tracking goes straight to the heart of focusing on kids’ effort and focusing on kids’ growth at the same time. It’s made a real difference to our students."

Michael Parker 
Headmaster, 
Oxley College, Bowral, NSW