College Websites

2024 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider do well and what does it need to do better?

Leaders and managers have a very clear overview of the quality of the provision at the college, including at the subcontractors. Staff carefully monitor each student’s performance and progress and, when this does not meet expectations, involve parents and/or carers, where appropriate, and put in place effective improvement actions. Leaders accurately identify where provision falls short of meeting their high standards and take effective action to improve it. Managers have reviewed and successfully enhanced the adult learning curriculum by, for example, ensuring that teachers cover the basic curriculum components comprehensively before teaching more advanced topics. They have communicated clearly their expectations to staff, and adult students now make very good progress in developing their knowledge and skills.

Leaders and managers recruit teachers who are very experienced and well qualified. They ensure that teachers’ industry knowledge remains current through a highly relevant professional development programme. The programme also includes topics such as the enhancement of teaching skills, instructional coaching and mentoring, which help teachers to continue to be effective practitioners.

Teachers plan and sequence the curriculum very well. In A-level psychology, teachers start with the research methods that underpin the course content. They then provide opportunities for students to use their new knowledge to explore different psychological approaches and theories in detail. On ESOL courses, teachers ensure that students learn and understand the core elements of how language is structured through reading and communication, before moving on to enabling students to apply this in their written work. As a result, students are able to build their knowledge and skills in a logical way and become much more confident in their abilities.

Students benefit from attending very interesting and informative lessons. Teachers use a range of effective teaching techniques to ensure that students have time to consolidate learning and transfer key concepts to their long-term memory. In A-level computer science, teachers conduct gap analyses of students’ performance on topic tests to inform their teaching and future assessments. Teachers accurately identify common mistakes and misconceptions made by students and address these through individual and whole-group activities. In A-level psychology, teachers use ‘retrieval sheets’ to provide a visual representation of topics to help students make links between different theories to aid their revision.

Teachers support students with high needs and additional learning needs very well. They ensure that specialist and other resources that students need are available for them, such as digi-pens, overlays and coloured paper, and they provide students with extra time to manage the demands of examinations. Students benefit from individual support throughout their time at college, including from employers when on work experience, to enable them to make very good progress and move successfully on to their next steps, which for most is to higher education and, in a few cases, to prestigious universities.

Students produce work of a very high standard and take pride in their work. They receive helpful feedback from teachers about how they can improve. Students reflect on their progress in review booklets, explore how they can develop their knowledge and skills further and set targets for their next pieces of work. They become more analytical in their written work over time and improve their grades.

Students benefit from a comprehensive careers programme. Through the tutorial and personal and professional development programmes, teachers ensure that students are very aware of progression pathways and potential next steps. Students speak confidently about their intended destinations and how to get there. They know how to apply for university places, seek apprenticeship opportunities and write job applications and prepare for interviews. A high proportion of students progress into higher education or on to an apprenticeship. For example, students completing applied science courses take up a broad range of options that relate to regional and national skills needs. These include taking nursing and paramedic degrees, gaining employment in the pharmaceutical industries and studying towards other science, technology, engineering and mathematics qualifications.

Governors are very well qualified and experienced in a range of sectors, including the armed forces, retail, finance, law, manufacturing and education. The committee structure enables governors to have a comprehensive view of the strengths and areas for improvement at the college. Governors provide supportive challenge to senior leaders to drive forward improvements.

2018 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve further?

• Accelerate the progress that students make when they study A levels in biology, physics, psychology and English literature.
• Further improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment by ensuring that teachers provide feedback to A-level students and adult students that helps them to understand how to improve their responses to questions that they may face in examinations and in their written assignments.
• Improve attendance on adult learning courses by ensuring that all staff set high expectations for attendance and follow up non-attendance rigorously.
• Further develop strategies to develop the skills that students need to be successful in adult life by:
  • carefully targeting work-related activities that students on 16 to 19 study programmes participate in, based on their starting points, to enable them to develop their skills and behaviours to their full potential
  • ensuring that adult students who study only vocational courses develop the English and mathematical skills that they need to secure employment or take on extra responsibilities in the workplace.

2016 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve further?

• Improve teaching, learning and assessment by ensuring that:
  • teachers check students’ progress regularly and plan activities that will challenge the most able and provide support for those who find the topic difficult so that all students make good progress in their studies
  • staff make students more aware of the progress they are making towards achieving their qualification and enable them to make the progress of which they are capable.
• Use quality improvement measures more effectively to identify how to improve teaching in weak subjects quickly and consistently.
• Ensure that students receive effective teaching and good support to help them achieve grades A* to C in GCSE English and mathematics resits.
• Tackle the variation in achievement rates on level 3 programmes so that students’ progress and achievement in all subject areas reach the same high standards as those in the best performing courses.

2013 Full Inspection Report

What does Franklin College need to do to improve further?

• Evaluate the impact of actions to rectify underperformance in the few remaining weaker subjects, ensuring that students’ views are incorporated into this. Use this evaluation to plan further actions in order to effect more rapid and sustained improvements.
• Consolidate the improvements made to the quality of teaching, learning and assessment by ensuring that teaching always challenges every student and especially stretches the more able, so that the proportion of high grades increases and all students achieve as well as they can.
• Provide further training to all staff to ensure that all judgements in self-assessment reports are sharply focused, self-critical, and lead to effective actions.
• As the new management structure continues to develop further, ensure that roles and responsibilities at all levels within it are clear to all staff.

2012 Full Inspection Report

What does Franklin College need to do to improve further?

• Ensure rapid and sustained improvement in success rates at GCE AS level and intermediate level by implementing existing retention strategies rigorously and evaluating their impact fully.
• Increase the percentage of high grades across advanced-level courses by improving lesson planning to ensure that the needs of individual students are met through appropriate and challenging learning activities. Provide greater opportunities, including homework assignments, to supplement learning in class.
• Ensure that all lesson plans include a stronger focus on the development of students’ literacy, numeracy and oracy skills and use lesson observations to evaluate how effectively students acquire and improve these skills.
• Improve the quality and consistency of teaching and learning by using the outcomes of lesson observations to inform actions for improvement. Devise mechanism to encourage regular sharing of good practice between classroom practitioners.
• Increase the rigour of self-assessment through deeper interrogation, involving all staff, of the root causes of underperformance. Use data more systematically to analyse performance across the college and to inform where improvements are needed. Use data more systematically to develop precise and measurable targets for all aspects of performance. Monitor progress against targets regularly. Evaluate fully actions taken to remedy weaknesses and use the outcome of this evaluation to set further targets to raise and sustain performance at a high level.

2008 Full Inspection Report

Areas for improvement

The college should address:

• success rates for 16-18 year olds in some courses, particularly at AS level
• the frequency of teaching and learning observations
• some poor and ageing accommodation.

2004 Full Inspection Report

What should be improved

• timeliness of some initial assessment arrangements at level 3
• retention rates on level 2 programmes for students aged 16 to 18
• the quality of some tutorials
• accessibility to some specialist curriculum resources at peak times
• accessibility of management information to curriculum area teams
• poor implementation and evaluation of action plans in a minority of curriculum areas.