Inspection Report Recommendations
Abingdon & Witney College
2017 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Ensure that all teachers carefully plan lessons that:
- take into account the needs and abilities of all learners within each class
- have a pace of learning which is appropriate for all learners to make progress
- challenge the most able learners to achieve their full potential.
- Increase the proportion of study programme learners that achieve their English and mathematics qualifications, by:
- improving the rate of attendance at these subjects
- better identifying the topics that learners are not yet confident with and developing strategies to enable teachers to address them.
- Leaders and managers must ensure that all adult learners have a good understanding of how to keep themselves safe from the risks posed by radicalisation and extremism.
Access Creative College
2016 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Carry out a thorough analysis to identify accurately areas where learners’ attendance is low. Implement a challenging action plan that targets these identified areas to improve rapidly.
- Further improve the development of learners’ English and mathematical skills by:
- raising the achievement rates in mathematics functional skills among younger learners
- supporting the development of functional skills by the most able trainees
- ensuring that teachers place greater emphasis on improving learners’ writing skills, correcting spelling and grammatical mistakes in the work produced by learners and setting up targets for improving these skills.
- Ensure that learners and teachers record and evaluate rigorously all the work-experience activities that study programme learners undertake, ensuring that these interventions allow them to make good progress with the development of their technical and personal skills.
- Ensure that all young learners are able to articulate the dangers related to extremism and radicalisation, and that trainees increase their awareness of how to remain safe when using the internet.
Accrington & Rossendale College
2008 Full Inspection Report
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- the progress made by GCE AS students and their overall success rate, which are currently satisfactory
- the need to continue to develop the use of ILT.
Activate Learning
2017 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Leaders and managers should speed up plans to improve the quality of the apprenticeship provision, and the quality of teaching, learning and assessment, focusing on those areas where achievement rates are not yet high enough. In particular they should make sure that:
- managers and assessors identify slow progress or poor performance among apprentices earlier so that more achieve in the planned time
- assessors set targets with apprentices, during reviews, that help them broaden their technical skills and knowledge
- assessors improve the quality of their feedback on submitted work to help apprentices develop their skills quicker
- all teachers use information about the starting points of learners to plan and provide work that is of a level and complexity appropriate to each learner, and develops their mathematical skills.
Ada College (National College of Digital Skills)
2018 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- To improve teaching, learning and assessment further, leaders and managers need to ensure that:
- teachers take better account of the different skills and knowledge that learners have at the beginning of their programme, and ensure that learners receive tasks that are suitably challenging
- teachers improve their skills in using strategies to deepen learners’ understanding of topics
- teachers promote equality and diversity better in lessons.
- Ensure that all apprentices have frequent reviews and that assessors accurately monitor and record apprentices’ acquisition of workplace skills and behaviours.
Addysg Oedolion Cymru
2019 Full Inspection Report
Recommendations
- Address the safeguarding concerns raised during the inspection
- Improve the rigour of self-evaluation processes and planning to ensure that all areas for development are identified and fully addressed
- Improve the ways in which tutors can share practice and resources
- Improve support for learners with additional learning needs
Andover College
2014 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Ensure students are set specific and measurable targets to enable them to make excellent progress and achieve higher grades, especially adult male students.
- Improve the quality and consistency of feedback on marked written work so that students know what they need to do to improve.
- Provide a broad range of challenging activities in lessons to meet the differing needs and abilities of students and help them to achieve their full potential.
- Ensure teachers’ action plans following lesson observations contain specific and timely interventions to promote rapid improvement in teaching, learning and assessment practice.
- Ensure all students aged 16 to 18 with the appropriate prior attainment have the opportunity to take GCSE English and mathematics in order to improve their employment prospects.
- Ensure all teachers routinely promote diversity in lessons to enable students to understand wider cultural values.
Aquinas College
2013 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Eradicate the remaining areas of underperformance and improve students’ results more rapidly through ensuring that all teachers use data available to help plan lessons that include activities that provide stretch and challenge, especially for the most-able students.
- Strengthen still further the rigour of arrangements to assure the quality of teaching, learning and assessment. Set clear and precise actions for improvement for individual teachers following lesson observations. Evaluate more fully the impact of staff training and use this to inform selfassessment.
- Revise and implement the policy for developing students’ intermediate-level English and/or mathematical skills. Ensure that teachers incorporate the development of written English and/or mathematical skills in lessons.
- Conduct more detailed analysis of the performance of different groups of students and use this to inform strategies for improvement at all levels.
- Analyse and use data more systematically at curriculum level to set precise and measurable targets for improvement within agreed timescales.
Ashton Sixth Form College
2020 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider do well and what does it need to do better?
Leaders and governors are highly ambitious for their students. They are committed to providing the highest-quality education to help students achieve their best possible outcome. Leaders and governors promote exceptionally high standards and pursue excellence in teaching, learning and assessment across all areas of the college. Leaders accurately identify best practice and areas for improvement. They use this to inform teachers’ staff development. Governors consistently hold senior leaders to account to sustain high-quality provision for all students. They act swiftly and incisively to eradicate the very few areas of underperformance. As a result, staff at all levels have a shared vision for ensuring the best possible education for their students. Students strive to be the best they can be.
Askham Bryan College
2011 Full Inspection Report
What does Askham Bryan College need to do to improve further?
- Improve the retention of adult students on advanced-level courses, particularly in floristry and animal management by ensuring that they fully understand the commitments required and by monitoring their progress very closely to enable prompt support to be put in place to help them stay on their course.
- Improve the quality of the provision at the newly acquired Newton Rigg campus by embedding the quality assurance processes and developing the curriculum further to ensure that it meets local area needs and is cost-effective.
- Improve the teaching and learning in theory sessions through the identification and sharing of good practice, better use of ILT and the VLE, and the planning of lessons to ensure that learning is consolidated, and that all learners are fully engaged and challenged to achieve their full potential.
- Build on the existing initial assessment practices to ensure that the needs of students with low levels of literacy and numeracy are clearly understood and to inform detailed measurable development targets. Prepare students fully for external tests to improve the success rates on functional skills.
- Implement the online monitoring system across all sites to ensure that all learners are given specific short-term targets that can be monitored closely so that all students are motivated and challenged to achieve their goals.
- Provide additional and appropriate training to support governors and middle managers in carrying out their duties in order to embed quality assurance procedures further and to ensure that prompt action is taken to improve students’ outcomes, reduce any inconsistencies across the different sites and meet the college’s vision to be outstanding.
Ayrshire College
2018 Full Inspection Report
Areas for Development
- During evaluation sessions some staff identified that they require more support to deal with the complex multiple barriers to learning students present with, such as mental health issues and the impact of adverse childhood experiences.
- Campaigns to support improved gender balance in traditionally imbalanced areas have yet to demonstrate sufficient impact. The curriculum areas of Construction, Hairdressing, Care and Engineering need to further action to address the gender imbalance.
- Retention rates for FE and HE full-time are lower than the national average.
- HE full-time successful outcomes have been below the national average for the last three years.
- Success rates for priority student groups such as care experienced students and those with a declared disability are below the College average.
- A few curriculum teams have not fully embedded and contextualised core skills delivery to their vocational area.
- A small number of curriculum areas do not take full advantage of the extensive employer engagement to provide students work-based placement opportunities or guest lectures to enhance the learning experience.
- Achievement rates for some apprenticeship frameworks are lower than the sector average.
- A range of CPD opportunities are provided for all staff to remain up-to-date in their teaching practice, however some curriculum staff do not take full advantage of these opportunities.
- A few curriculum staff have yet to fully develop the potential of digital learning and assessment in the delivery of the curriculum to enhance the learning experience.
- A few curriculum teams do not reflect on and evaluate learning and teaching approaches sufficiently well.
- The Board has recruited seven new members for session 2018-19 who will require support and development to understand the operating context of the College.
- Feedback from Education Scotland highlighted that in a few curriculum areas, there is an inconsistent approach to the management and administration of course team meetings, which is a missed opportunity for staff to initiate and implement improvement measures.
- Team evaluation activity highlighted that there is limited ownership of student attendance and unit performance data by a few lecturers, resulting in insufficient analysis of the reasons for student withdrawals.
Barking & Dagenham College
2013 Full Inspection Report
What does the college need to do to improve further?
- Increase success rates and further improve teaching, learning and assessment across all curriculum areas by ensuring that:
- vocational teachers rigorously identify and improve students’ English and mathematics skills within their subject areas at all times
- teachers know how to use suitable questioning and assessment techniques that develop students’ learning effectively and enable students to improve their thinking skills so that they can develop deeper thinking and study skills
- all teachers can confidently and effectively manage more challenging behaviour of students when such situations arise.
- Within curriculum areas, and specifically in lessons, improve the confidence and skills of teachers to ensure the understanding of equality and diversity.
Barnet & Southgate College
2018 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Leaders and managers should monitor the quality of subcontractors effectively, including the quality of their teaching, learning and assessment, so that they can ensure that the quality of subcontracted provision is at least good.
- Leaders and managers should monitor students’ progress accurately, so that managers can intervene swiftly when students are at risk of not completing their courses.
- Leaders and managers should put strategies in place to ensure that those students who study A-level programmes complete their courses and achieve their qualifications.
- Leaders and managers should improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment by:
- providing teachers, including agency staff, with relevant and targeted support so that they improve their practice swiftly
- ensuring that teachers provide students with inspiring and challenging activities that help them to develop their knowledge and skills, so that they make good or better progress
- ensuring that teachers give their students detailed and helpful feedback on their work, so that they know what they need to do to improve.
- Leaders and managers should improve students’ attendance by putting effective strategies in place which teachers implement consistently.
- Teachers should develop students’ English and mathematical skills, so that a greater proportion of students improve their GCSE grades.
Barnfield College
2017 Full Inspection Report
Information about the provider
- West Herts College is a large provider with around 5,800 students and apprentices following study programmes, apprenticeships and adult and community learning courses. A small number of students with high needs study foundation, employability courses and study programmes. The college has three campuses located in Watford, Hemel Hempstead and Kings Langley. Students access the college from a wide geographical area that includes west Hertfordshire and parts of north London.
- The proportion of pupils achieving five or more GCSEs at A* to C including English and mathematics is higher in Hertfordshire than compared with that nationally. However, within a few localities that the college recruits its students, including Broxbourne and Dacorum, a much lower proportion of pupils achieve high grades than nationally. The proportion of people who are educated to level 3 and level 4 in Hertfordshire and Watford is higher than across England.
Barnsley College
2010 Full Inspection Report
What does Barnsley College need to do to improve further?
- Continue to implement and monitor current strategies for improving success rates on AS courses and address the variability in value-added scores between different AS- and A-level subjects.
- Maintain the focus on continuously improving the quality of teaching and learning so that learning activities and assessments enable all learners to achieve highly; secure greater reliability in the college’s lesson grade-profile by developing observers’ skills in evaluating how much learning takes place within lessons and how much progress learners make.
- Ensure, through closer monitoring and evaluation, that learners’ electronic learning plans are completed fully to a consistently high standard, with specific, short-term targets that provide challenge and help learners to improve.
- Provide work experience opportunities for a wider range of full-time students by drawing on the good practice in some curriculum areas and overcoming traditional barriers in others.
- Strengthen the promotion of equality and diversity in the curriculum by sharing good practices and building the confidence and ability of teachers to recognise the opportunities presented in their own subject area.
Barnsley Sixth Form College
2010 Full Inspection Report
What does Barnsley College need to do to improve further?
- Continue to implement and monitor current strategies for improving success rates on AS courses and address the variability in value-added scores between different AS- and A-level subjects.
- Maintain the focus on continuously improving the quality of teaching and learning so that learning activities and assessments enable all learners to achieve highly; secure greater reliability in the college’s lesson grade-profile by developing observers’ skills in evaluating how much learning takes place within lessons and how much progress learners make.
- Ensure, through closer monitoring and evaluation, that learners’ electronic learning plans are completed fully to a consistently high standard, with specific, short-term targets that provide challenge and help learners to improve.
- Provide work experience opportunities for a wider range of full-time students by drawing on the good practice in some curriculum areas and overcoming traditional barriers in others.
- Strengthen the promotion of equality and diversity in the curriculum by sharing good practices and building the confidence and ability of teachers to recognise the opportunities presented in their own subject area.
Barton Peveril Sixth Form College
2010 Full Inspection Report
What does Barton Peveril College need to do to improve further?
- Ensure that quality assurance procedures and targeted staff development are used effectively to reduce the variable performance across subjects and bring all courses up to the standard of the best. Monitor action plans frequently to check that desired improvements are taking place.
- Improve the quality and consistency of lesson planning so that teaching and learning activities match the abilities and capabilities of all students, providing suitable levels of challenge to the more able students.
- Ensure that course action plans focus on specific actions to improve teaching and learning, and how these will be implemented, in order to increase the impact of this work.
Basingstoke College of Technology
2016 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Continue promoting the recently introduced strategies to track attendance and follow up on nonattendance, reinforcing the evolving culture of zero tolerance towards unauthorised absences.
- Identify those areas of the 16 to 19 study programme where learners’ progress is too slow and too few learners successfully achieve their qualification. Share best practice with those areas, particularly around the use of target setting, progress monitoring and providing feedback to learners, to help increase the proportion of learners who successfully achieve their qualifications.
- Continue promoting and developing the recently introduced strategies for raising the quality of teaching, learning and assessment on functional skills and GCSE English and mathematics, reinforcing to learners the importance of these subjects to their longer-term success.
Bath College
2018 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Improve the teaching of theory lessons to motivate and enthuse learners to make more rapid progress by:
- providing a wide range of relevant activities, and introducing new concepts and information at a suitable pace to deepen learners’ understanding, knowledge and skills
- developing learners’ English and mathematical skills in vocational settings
- frequently checking learners’ understanding of what they are learning.
- Ensure that staff across the college make thorough use of the information they have about their learners to plan and set work that challenges them to make rapid progress, and achieve the highest grades of which they are capable.
Bedford College
2019 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Leaders and managers need to ensure that those learners with complex high needs receive the additional support that will enable them to have the best chance for success. This includes the use of specialists in speech and language development. Leaders and managers need to ensure that vocational teachers and in-class support staff communicate effectively with each other the ongoing needs of learners.
- Leaders and managers need to ensure that adult learners, particularly those on part-time and distance learning programmes, understand how to keep themselves safe from the risks of radicalisation, and online. They must ensure that staff develop adult learners’ understanding of how British values relate to them and their everyday lives.
- Leaders need to ensure that teachers use learning from all parts of the programme, including work experience, to enable learners to retain and develop their knowledge and skills more securely over time.
Bedford Sixth Form College
2019 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Leaders and managers need to ensure that those learners with complex high needs receive the additional support that will enable them to have the best chance for success. This includes the use of specialists in speech and language development. Leaders and managers need to ensure that vocational teachers and in-class support staff communicate effectively with each other the ongoing needs of learners.
- Leaders and managers need to ensure that adult learners, particularly those on part-time and distance learning programmes, understand how to keep themselves safe from the risks of radicalisation, and online. They must ensure that staff develop adult learners’ understanding of how British values relate to them and their everyday lives.
- Leaders need to ensure that teachers use learning from all parts of the programme, including work experience, to enable learners to retain and develop their knowledge and skills more securely over time.
Belfast Metropolitan College
2013 Full Inspection Report
What does the Belfast Metropolitan College need to do to improve further?
The College needs to:
- implement a coherent strategy to improve the quality of teaching and learning across the College, that is underpinned by rigorous monitoring and evaluation, and a widespread continual professional development programme with a strong focus on developing effective pedagogy;
- strengthen quality management across the College, particularly the effective use of data and rigorous self-evaluation that is supported with more timely intervention strategies to address underperformance;
- clarify more explicitly the roles of the curriculum managers in monitoring and evaluating the quality of the provision;
- take urgent action to improve the inadequate quality of the provision in transport operations and maintenance, particularly assessment tracking and recording, collegial working and the process for self-evaluation; and
- strengthen the quality of leadership and management of the work-based learning provision, in particular the monitoring and tracking of the progress of trainees and apprentices, and self-evaluation procedures including the work of sub-contracted training providers.
Berkshire College of Agriculture
2017 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Improve rapidly the quality of the apprenticeship provision, by:
- ensuring that assessors review the progress that apprentices are making with them and their employers more frequently, setting specific targets for learning and progress within challenging timescales
- providing good quality off-the-job training that reflects the level of the apprenticeship and the skills, roles and responsibilities that apprentices have in their jobs
- developing apprentices’ understanding of how to keep themselves safe from the dangers of extremism and radicalisation, and of British values.
- Improve rapidly the quality of teaching, learning and assessment in GCSE mathematics, by:
- ensuring that teachers plan and teach lessons that enable students to develop and master the specific skills that they are not yet proficient in
- using information on what students have achieved in lessons to plan further learning, checking learning frequently and thoroughly.
- Improve the progress that students, especially the most able, make, by:
- ensuring that teachers assess students’ work promptly after submission and provide them with feedback on their work that identifies clearly what they have done well and what skills, knowledge or understanding they need to develop further
- agreeing specific actions with students that will help them achieve or exceed their target grades.
Bexhill College
2010 Full Inspection Report
What does Bexhill College need to do to improve further?
- Continue to develop teachers’ skills to make better use of a range of teaching methods, in order to increase the proportion of good or better lessons and improve students’ progress and outcomes.
- Ensure that self-assessment across all subjects is consistently evaluative and leads to specific and detailed targets, to bring about continuous and sustained improvement.
- Continue to develop the skills of curriculum managers in order to achieve the ambitious college vision and meet high aspirations for students.
- Fully implement the college’s strategy for interactive technologies and their use to improve teaching and learning further.
- Share best practice in the promotion of equality and diversity in the curriculum to ensure all students are well prepared for life in a diverse community.
- Link tutorial activities more closely to the content of students’ programmes to make them more relevant and meaningful for students.
Bexley Learning & Enterprise College
2020 Full Inspection Report
What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Managers should ensure that all staff have access to the information about what learners know and can do at the start and during the course. Staff should use this information effectively to identify appropriate support for their learners.
- Leaders should ensure that learners on all programmes receive detailed and timely advice and guidance on higher education and employment.