What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Increase the proportion of learners aged 16 to18 on advanced courses who stay to the end of their courses, by ensuring that teaching, training and assessment on these programmes are always of the highest quality. Build on the work that has started to ensure that learners are always enrolled on the right courses. Ensure the steep rise in retention rates across the college is replicated on advanced courses for learners aged 16 to 18 by ensuring that staff share best practice.
- Improve apprenticeship training by ensuring that staff and employers understand the need for apprentices to complete their qualifications on time. Ensure that apprentices receive clear advice and guidance regarding targets for completing different aspects of their programme. Use data more effectively to identify areas where training is taking too long and take urgent remedial action if apprentices are falling behind.
- Consolidate the improvements made to the quality of teaching, learning and assessment by ensuring that teaching always challenges the more-able learners. Ensure that all teachers use lesson plans to personalise the work they set for learners and take into account their prior attainment and abilities. Focus staff development for teachers on sharing good practice in developing robust questioning techniques and marking. Ensure that teachers set high aspirational targets for all learners no matter what their prior educational experience has been.
- Develop the skills of teachers across all curriculum areas to enable them to provide better support for learners who need to improve their literacy skills. Enhance the links between specialist functional skills teachers and teachers in vocational subjects to ensure an effective approach to the marking and assessment of spelling, presentation and grammar. Increase the proportion of learners who gain high grades in GCSE English by ensuring that specialist referrals for literacy support are made swiftly and that the use of independent learning and homework give learners more time to practise written English.
What does Kirklees College need to do to improve further?
- Improve retention rates across the college by ensuring that monitoring and intervention systems, such as those to support ‘at risk’ students, are effectively embedded across all subjects.
- Improve the quality and consistency of teaching and learning by ensuring that all lessons are planned effectively to maximise students’ progress.
- Ensure greater consistency among the observation team so that the appropriate weighting is given to judgements about lessons.
- Closely monitor students’ progress using high quality individual learning plans to set meaningful and sufficiently ambitious students’ targets. Ensure that progress against these is clearly recorded, including progress against targets to develop students’ literacy and numeracy skills.
- Increase engagement with employers, including within subjects areas, to aid curriculum planning and help drive improvement. Formally gather employers’ and stakeholders’ views to better inform planning.
- Ensure that full information relating to the support individual students are receiving is used effectively to monitor and assess the impact on their progress.
- Close the gaps in success between different groups of students, particularly those from different ethnic backgrounds, by introducing a robust system to identify where the gaps are and then devise plans for improvement.
- Ensure that systems to improve the quality of provision and outcomes for students are applied robustly in all areas, supported by consistency in the use of data. Ensure that information used to formulate judgements in the self-assessment report is examined rigorously so that strengths and areas for improvement are accurately portrayed.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- the inadequate provision in ICT
- low success rates at level 1 for all learners and at level 3 for 16-18-yearolds
- slow progress in improving retention
- unsatisfactory key skills management and outcomes
- insufficient focus on learning
- poor setting and review of targets for learners
- the inconsistent application of quality assurance arrangements to improve provision.
Areas for improvement
- provide more additional learning support in building crafts
- improve recruitment practices in plumbing work-based learning
- better maintenance of accommodation
What should be improved
- low retention rates on many courses
- poor punctuality of students
- unimaginative teaching
- organisation and teaching of key skills
- take up of additional learning support
- management and co-ordination of work-based learning.
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