Leaders and managers should ensure that all apprenticeship programmes include a clearly defined curriculum, appropriate structure and enough well-planned tuition to enable all apprentices to develop a suitable range of skills and knowledge to the required level.
Managers should review the small number of courses in which the curriculum is not ambitious enough so that course content and teaching are challenging for all learners.
Managers should ensure that all courses provide enough opportunities for learners to revisit topics they have previously studied so that they can practise their skills and strengthen their recall of information.
Managers should ensure that all learners’ work is marked promptly. They should ensure that all staff understand and apply the principles of effective feedback.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
Continue to raise the standards of classroom practice so that more students benefit from outstanding teaching and learning that challenges and stretches all of them.
Identify the reasons for the relatively weaker performance on long courses for students and apprentices aged 16 to 18 and take effective actions to help them improve further.
Implement actions to ensure that teachers’ written feedback on students’ marked work is more detailed and constructive, to help students understand how they can improve further.
Develop further links with external partners to support more students on study programmes to improve their employability skills through the provision of work placements or work experience.
What does Sandwell College need to do to improve further?
Increase success rates still further by providing learners with clearer and more challenging targets, and giving them more detailed information about how they could improve their work.
Help learners make better progress by ensuring that teachers use information about learners’ prior attainment when planning their lessons so that tasks are better matched to learners’ interests and abilities.
Further develop teachers’ skills by focusing staff development activities more sharply on learning in lessons and evaluating fully the impact of staff development on raising the quality of learning.
Improve the rigour of lesson observations by ensuring that observers focus more consistently on the learning and progress that takes place, to enable the college to have a more accurate picture of the quality of lessons and so inform improvement planning more effectively.
Provide more opportunities for employers to become involved in quality improvement procedures in preparation for their greater involvement in the new college.
Set challenging performance targets for the new college and ensure that college managers are prepared fully to meet them.