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Manchester College

2019 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
  • Improve attendance, particularly in English and mathematics, by making sure that teachers have appropriately high expectations for students that closely reflect workplace demands.
  • Ensure that students who have high needs develop the personal skills they need for adult life, rather than teachers planning and delivering learning that focuses too narrowly on the requirements of qualifications.
  • Ensure that a much higher proportion of students studying GCSE English and mathematics achieve a grade 4 or above.
  • Ensure that teachers of A-level courses plan and deliver learning that is high quality so that a much higher proportion of students achieve their full potential.

2017 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
  • Increase the speed of learners’ progress on study programmes and on specialist courses for learners with high needs by:
    • taking full account of learners’ starting points when planning learning
    • setting challenging and aspirational targets and long-term goals for learners to encourage them to make rapid progress
    • using activities in lessons that challenge learners and enable them to make good progress towards achieving their potential
    • monitoring closely the progress that learners make towards their targets and intervening quickly when they fall behind.
  • Quickly improve the quality of the apprenticeship programme and ensure that a much higher proportion of apprentices complete their programme by:
    • planning training much more effectively so that it takes account of apprentices’ starting points and focuses on the development of new skills
    • ensuring that apprentices in all vocational areas participate in and benefit from high-quality off-the-job training
    • monitoring the progress of apprentices more closely and accurately so that managers and trainers can take action quickly to support apprentices who are falling behind.
  • Ensure that teachers and trainers across all provision types provide feedback that ensures that learners and apprentices understand what they need to do to improve and make good progress.
  • Put a much stronger emphasis on developing the basic personal and social skills that learners on study programmes will need for work, including arriving for lessons prepared for study.
  • Improve the level of attendance on study programmes and adult learning programmes, by:
    • identifying courses and curriculum areas where attendance is persistently too low, and taking action quickly to improve attendance on these courses
    • making it much clearer to learners that repeated absence from lessons is not acceptable
    • providing good support for learners who are persistently absent to improve their attendance and to ensure that they do not fall behind with their work.
  • Improve the ability of teachers and trainers to develop learners’ and apprentices’ English and mathematics skills, and ensure that that they use this effectively to enable learners and apprentices to make good progress in improving these skills.
  • Ensure that the college’s strategy focuses closely on identifying and rectifying weaknesses that impact on the progress of current learners as well as focusing on longer-term strategic goals.
  • Improve quality assurance and improvement arrangements so that they identify much more accurately and precisely the specific features of teaching, learning and assessment that require improvement, and take swift action to improve weaker aspects.

2014 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
  • Improve learners’ progress and achievement further by:
    • raising higher-grade achievement on GCSE and advanced-level courses
    • raising the proportion of learners who achieve in the small minority of subjects where success rates remain low
    • ensuring that more learners attend regularly and on time
    • providing sufficient stretch and challenge to enable all learners to achieve their potential in relation to their starting points
    • improving the quality of teachers’ feedback on marked work so that all learners understand what they need to do to achieve challenging targets.
  • Raise the quality of teaching, learning and assessment further by:
    • ensuring that all teachers use information about learners’ starting points to plan learning and set high-quality, demanding targets
    • ensuring that all teachers have the skills to plan lessons with learning objectives that build on learners’ progress
    • improving the development of learners’ English and mathematics skills in the areas where this is not yet sufficiently integrated, through the full implementation of the English and mathematics strategy
    • ensuring that all learners on study programmes benefit from work placements so that they develop the relevant work-related skills required for their subject area
    • improving the quality and frequency of workplace assessment and employers’ involvement for a minority of apprentices
    • ensuring that the content of the virtual learning environment (VLE) enables learners to study in their own time.
  • Improve the quality of provision that is not yet good by:
    • strengthening the quality assurance and quality improvement arrangements in workplace learning
    • extending self-assessment to support areas so that these areas can evaluate their contribution to learners’ achievement
    • improving the collection and use of data to provide greater consistency in monitoring performance against targets
    • ensuring that all managers are skilled in implementing improvement plans.

2011 Full Inspection Report
What does The Manchester College need to do to improve further?
  • Improve standards and increase success rates on main qualifications by consistently applying enrolment criteria to ensure that learners are placed on the right level of course. Rigorously monitor learners’ progress against clear and specific targets so that they know exactly what to do to achieve.
  • Improve the quality of teaching and learning by ensuring that all teachers plan lessons well to meet the range of needs of all learners so that everyone is challenged sufficiently and makes good progress. Share good practice in the use of ILT and effective assessment strategies to promote and check learning. Improve attendance and punctuality to lessons.
  • Urgently improve the quality of provision in construction so that fewer learners leave the college early and so that learners develop the skills and knowledge required to pass their qualifications.
  • Increase the accountability of curriculum managers by establishing a culture of target setting at course level. Use and analyse data more accurately and comprehensively to monitor success rates closely.
  • Enable governors to examine properly, and challenge, learners’ outcomes by providing them with clear and detailed reports on success rates together with training on how to evaluate rigorously the college’s performance.
  • Develop more robust and self-critical approaches to course review and self-assessment which use data and other sources of information to identify areas for improvement more reliably, and provide well-targeted and measurable actions to secure rapid improvements.

Report Recommendations