West Lothian College

2024 Full Inspection Report

The following areas for improvement were identified and discussed with the senior managers:

• The rate of successful completion for one full-time FE subject group declined from 85% to 51.70% which is 6.5% below the sector norm.
• There is no consistent approach to the tracking and monitoring of meta skills within college programmes. This is limiting learner awareness of the importance of these skills and their ability to identify and promote them to prospective employers.

Salisbury Sixth Form College - Good

2017 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve further?

• Provide effective professional development and support to managers and teachers to identify and implement improvements to raise the standard of teaching further, and enable all learners to achieve their full potential.
• Provide more opportunities for learners to develop work-related skills through work experience and greater contact with local employers.

Middlesbrough Community Learning - Good

2024 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Provide training for staff that focuses on the development of teaching skills, particularly in consolidating learning and in assessment practice.
• Ensure that tutors use resources that are age-appropriate for adults.

Prior Pursglove College - Good

2019 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve further?

• Leaders and managers should use data more effectively to analyse the progress, performance and achievement of all students so that they can quickly identify any areas of concern and take rapid action to bring about improvements.
• Leaders should take steps to close the gaps in the achievements of different groups of students who do not follow study programmes at level 3. In particular, they should ensure that:
  • students on study programmes at levels 1 and 2 and adults who have a recognised learning difficulty and/or disability receive the support that they need so that they achieve as well as their peers
  • the proportion of male students who achieve improves.
• Governors and leaders should take effective action to resolve the remaining differences in the quality of provision and the outcomes for students at the two campuses by ensuring that good practice is shared effectively and areas of underperformance are dealt with swiftly. In particular, they should ensure that the proportion of students who remain on their courses at the Stockton campus continues to improve.

North West Regional College

2012 Full Inspection Report

What does the North West Regional College need to do to improve further?

In further education, further work is needed to improve the quality of the College’s provision in essential skills, particularly leadership and management, the quality of teaching and learning in a significant minority of lessons, and in the outcomes in the essential skill of ICT.

In work-based learning, there is a need to improve the quality of the provision, particularly:

• to provide more effective leadership and management of the work-based learning provision;
• improve the quality of mechanical and manufacturing engineering which is inadequate;
• expand the range of the provision, and in particular the numbers of learners registered on the ApprenticeshipsNI programme; and
• to improve outcomes and achievements and progression rates to further education and training on the Programme-led Apprenticeship strand of Training for Success programme.

Northern Regional College

2013 Full Inspection Report

What does the Northern Regional College need to do to improve further?

There is a need to improve the quality of the provision, in particular the College should work to:

1. Establish more robust strategic quality improvement planning processes to inform more effectively curriculum planning across the College. The curriculum for the Training for Success provision in work-based learning needs to be urgently reviewed, in particular to address the significant areas for improvement in the current curriculum offer for the majority of the Programme-Led Apprentices.
2. Address the inadequate leadership and management and overall standards and achievements in work-based learning, particularly the Training for Success provision, and also take action to improve the satisfactory or inadequate overall quality of the provision for brickwork, electrical installation, plumbing and wood occupations.
3. Improve the quality of the provision for the essential skills across the College, with a particular focus on the quality of teaching and learning, and standards and outcomes in this area.
4. Implement an effective quality improvement planning process to address learners’ underachievement, which is underpinned by accurate and reliable data and informed by a more effective process of self-evaluation. The College needs to ensure that managers are clear about the fundamental importance of outcomes for learners in their areas of responsibility, and that they are implementing effective strategies to tackle shortcomings in performance.
5. Build on the particularly good practice which exists in engineering, and a few other professional and technical areas, in order to broaden further the extent and impact of economic engagement across the College.

Newcastle & Stafford Colleges Group - Outstanding

2019 Full Inspection Report

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

Leaders and managers have very effectively brought about the merger of Newcastle College and Stafford College. They have integrated rapidly the two campuses, setting high expectations for both staff and learners. Direction from senior leaders is clear, supportive and challenging. As a result, staff are highly motivated and feel able to provide learners with an outstanding learning experience.

Merthyr Tydfil College

2025 Full Inspection Report

Recommendations

We have made three recommendations to help the college continue to improve:

1. Strengthen the arrangements for identifying and supporting learners’ additional learning needs
2. Sharpen strategies to improve learners’ attendance and punctuality
3. Improve learners’ use of Welsh

Forth Valley College

2023 Annual Engagement Visit Report

The following areas for improvement was identified and discussed with the senior managers:

• The rates of withdrawal for learners from a care-experienced background is high, and is higher than both the sector norm and the overall withdrawal rate of the wider college.
• Most curriculum teams have not yet fully embedded the development of meta skills within their programmes.
• A few teaching staff do not have a sufficient level of digital skill to fully support the ambitions of the college’s strategy for delivering learning and teaching.
• Arrangements for collating an overall, college-wide overview of the quality of learning and teaching are not sufficiently clear.
• Overall, learners are not yet sufficiently aware of the role of the SA in contributing to arrangements for evaluating, reviewing and improving the quality of provision.
• Arrangements for learners to evaluate their learning experience are not consistent across all teaching teams.

Glasgow Kelvin College

2024 Annual Engagement Visit Report

The following areas for improvement were identified and discussed with the senior managers:

• There is scope to improve learner representation on Modern Apprenticeship (MA) and employer led programmes.
• Learners are not sufficiently aware of their development of essential skills or meta skills.
• There is no college-wide approach to the recording of learners’ wider skills, including meta skills.
• Less than half of learners are aware that the SA is a feedback route to improve the learner experience.
• Less than half of class representatives have undergone training and many class representatives are not clear about their role.

Glasgow Clyde College

2024 Annual Engagement Visit Report

The following areas for improvement were identified and discussed with the senior managers:

• A few curriculum teams do not track learners’ development of core, essential and meta skills to support them to become reflective learners.
• Some class representatives have not yet received appropriate training for their role.

Guernsey Institute - Good

2023 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Improve student attendance at English and mathematics lessons, and make sure that more students achieve their qualifications in these subjects.
• Ensure that students with high needs studying vocational courses achieve as well as their peers.
• Make sure that information on what students and apprentices already know and can do is used by lecturers to plan the content and teaching of the curriculum in each subject.
• Ensure that the curriculum in all subject areas is designed to enable students and apprentices to explore topics in sufficient depth and breadth.

Dumfries & Galloway College - Satisfactory

2024 Annual Engagement Visit Report

The following areas for improvement were identified and discussed with the senior managers:

• There is no consistent approach for learners to record their development of metaskills. This is limiting the ability of learners to identify and discuss these skills with prospective employers.
• Most learner representatives have not received sufficient training to undertake their role effectively.

Edinburgh College

2024 Annual Engagement Visit Report

Main points for action

• College managers should continue to develop strategies to improve collaboration between curriculum and support services, including further development of joint approaches to self-evaluation.
• College staff and managers should continue to focus on reducing withdrawal rates for learners on part-time FE programmes and improving overall successful completion rates.
• College managers and the SA should work together to increase learners’ awareness of the role of the SA and its function in representing the views of learners.

Basingstoke College of Technology - Good

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.

South Lanarkshire College

2019 Full Inspection Report

Areas for development

• Although the College’s student population has an overall gender balance that is 50:50 male-female, courses in specific subjects such as Hairdressing, Beauty, Construction and Care do not all reflect this balance. Further action is required to address this and make progress towards meeting national targets.
• Although attainment rates are very high across all student categories and subjects, well above regional targets and generally at or above 70% across the various groups, there is further potential to improve outcomes to maintain consistently very high attainment rates across all groups and subjects.
• The College should monitor the effectiveness and impact of its new approaches for Learning Support and Extended learning support. In line with national policy, the College should monitor the effectiveness and impact of the new British Sign Language Plan.
• Although outcomes for students are already very high across diverse groups of students, the College would benefit from drawing on best practice from the wider UK college sector to further enhance outcomes.

Newbattle Abbey College - Satisfactory

2024 Full Inspection Report

The following areas for improvement were identified and discussed with the senior managers:

• There is scope to enhance professional practice by using the professional standards and the evaluation of naturally occurring professional development activities.
• Some learners experience challenges with the digital technologies staff use to support learning and teaching. These issues include reliability and compatibility of technology and the level of digital skills of some staff.
• There is scope to strengthen the monitoring and reporting of actions taken as a result of learner feedback.
• The use of Class Notebook is not yet used consistently across all curriculum teams.

North East Scotland College

2024 Annual Engagement Visit

The following areas for improvement were identified and discussed with the senior managers:

• Rates of completion with partial success for learners on part-time programmes have increased.
• Teaching staff do not always have sufficient time or opportunity to reflect on and engage with, the updating of their professional subject knowledge and skills.
• The majority of class representatives have not received training to support them to carry out their role.

Sandwell Adult & Family Learning Service - Good

2018 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve further?

• Improve the minority of teaching and learning which are not yet good by:
  • ensuring that all teachers adapt their learning activities to meet the needs of learners; in particular those with learning difficulties and disabilities, those who speak English as an additional language, and the most able learners
  • identifying existing good practice, and sharing this knowledge, skill and understanding with teachers so that there is improved consistency, and more learners progress well.
• Improve the management information systems, so that managers receive timely information about the attendance, retention and progress of current learners to enable them to take prompt action to identify and rectify underperformance by groups of learners.
• Further improve the outcomes of learners on mathematics functional skills level 1 courses by continuing the current management strategy of recruiting, training and closely managing the performance of teaching staff in this area.
• Broaden and extend learners’ understanding of the dangers of radicalisation and extremism by:
  • improving the confidence and knowledge of teachers so that they are able to discuss with learners the different aspects of radicalisation and extremism
  • ensuring that learners have more opportunities to express their understanding of the different forms of extremism as it affects their local community.

Unified Seevic Palmer's College - Good

2024 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Ensure that staff set and monitor appropriate personal development targets for all students with high needs on non-accredited courses that help them to make good progress.
• Continue to work with staff and students to ensure that attendance is consistently high.
• Continue to develop stakeholder engagement in the very small number of curriculum areas where it is less well advanced.

Tyne Metropolitan College - Good

2024 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Maintain the momentum of rapid improvements to continue increasing attendance and improving achievement.
• Ensure that learners with high needs, particularly those on supported internships, have meaningful work experience which is related to their individual career aspirations.

Riseholme College - Good

2023 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Ensure that managers continue to improve the teaching skills of those teachers whose practice is not at the standard expected by leaders.
• Ensure that all teachers provide precise and useful feedback on students’ and apprentices’ work to enable them to improve the quality of their work.
• Improve attendance in all provision for young people.

Realise Futures - Good

2024 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Increase the proportion of learners in health and social care and digital skills courses that remain in learning and achieve their qualifications.
• Ensure that learners have access to high-quality careers advice and guidance so that learners interested in a career understand how to reach their ultimate career aim.
• Ensure that tutors receive training to improve their teaching skills.

National College for Nuclear - Good

2024 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Improve the quality of teaching that adult learners receive to provide them with the support they need to prepare them for their next steps.
• Improve the quality of teaching on the minority of poorly performing apprenticeships so that all apprentices receive the same high-quality teaching.
• Ensure that all teachers set sufficiently precise targets for all learners and apprentices to enable the effective monitoring of their progress.
• Ensure that all learners and apprentices, including those with high needs, understand the risks associated with radicalisation and extremism.
• Use the information on learners’ starting points to plan learning that enables all learners to make the progress of which they are capable, in particular for the most able.

Lancashire Adult Learning - Outstanding

2024 Full Inspection Report

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

Leaders have designed curriculums that are highly ambitious and help learners and apprentices to build their knowledge, skills and behaviours over time. For example, adult learners on tailored family learning on the early years, education and childcare pathway firstly study family English and mathematics and subjects such as robotics and coding with their children in community settings. They continue to build on their learning and develop and apply their knowledge and skills when they study a level 1 or level 2 qualification in support work in schools and colleges. Consequently, many adult learners improve their confidence significantly and find jobs or volunteer in schools. Young learners on the digital production, design and development T level learn about emerging technologies and business environments in their first year. The knowledge they gain in year one helps them to learn and apply more complex knowledge and skills in year two, such as when they write project proposals.

etc.

John Ruskin College - Good

2025 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Improve the teaching on the foundation learning programmes so all learners with high needs make the progress they are capable of.
• Provide learners and apprentices with feedback that helps them know what they need to do to improve.
• Increase the proportion of 16- to 18-year-old learners on level 1 courses who stay until the end and achieve their qualifications.
• Increase the proportion of adult and 16- to 18-year-old learners who achieve at least a grade 4 in GCSE English and/or mathematics.