Godalming College - Outstanding

2019 Full Inspection Report

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

Trustees, leaders, managers and staff have very high expectations of their students. They have developed an outstanding culture in the college, which concentrates very strongly on learning and developing students’ independent learning skills. As a result, students are highly motivated, determined to succeed and studious. They are extremely committed to their studies. Students benefit from the extensive range of subjects, which enables them to follow the most appropriate programmes for their ambitions and aspirations. They appreciate the excellent resources and accommodation that help them learn.

Franklin Sixth Form College - Outstanding

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.

etc.

South Hampshire College Group - Good

2025 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Reduce the number of apprentices that have gone beyond the time expected to complete their apprenticeship.
• Improve young learners’ attendance to GCSE English and mathematics lessons.
• Ensure that staff use progress reviews so that apprentices know the progress they are making and how to improve.
• Ensure that teachers give consistently clear instructions and explanations of concepts in their teaching.

Essex Adult & Community Learning Service - Good

2023 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Improve the proportion of adult care apprentices and adult learners who complete their learning on accredited courses where this is too low.
• Ensure that adult learners and apprentices are aware of the local safeguarding risks in the areas in which they live and work.
• Ensure that apprentices receive sufficient independent careers advice and guidance so that they are aware of the wider career options available to them.

Elliott Hudson College - Outstanding

2018 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve further?

• Provide work experience earlier in the study programme for students who would benefit from it because, for example, they are not planning to progress to university.

East Coast College - Good

2024 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Implement actions to increase the proportion of apprentices who achieve their qualifications in a timely manner.
• Implement actions to increase the proportion of younger students on diploma and A levels who remain on their courses and achieve their qualifications.
• Make sure students’ starting points are used effectively to set tasks that are challenging on the few programmes for young people and in the specialist provision for students with high needs where students find work too easy.

Dudley College of Technology - Good

2023 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Increase the number of apprentices who remain on programme and achieve their apprenticeship on time.
• Ensure that all learners and apprentices receive routinely planned CEIAG.
• Ensure that all teachers receive sufficient vocational updating as part of their continual professional development programme.
• Continue to improve attendance and punctuality, notably in English and mathematics, for learners on education programmes for young people.

Dixons Sixth Form Academy - Outstanding

2018 Full Inspection Report

What does the school need to do to improve further?

• Continue to improve the provision for pupils with SEND so that more of them make progress that at least matches other pupils with the same starting points.

Connell Sixth Form College - Good

2018 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Managers should ensure that the standard of education and training in newly implemented vocational programmes is as rigorous as it is in the more established courses. They should do this by:
  • ensuring that students’ starting points are clearly identified and teachers use this information to plan programmes that will challenge students to achieve their potential
  • providing purposeful and regular feedback to students to help them to extend their knowledge and develop new skills to assist them in making good progress in their studies.
• Leaders and managers should improve the financial stability of the college.
• Leaders, governors and managers should set clear and specific actions in the quality improvement plan to enable them to evaluate continually the progress they make.

Community Learning in Partnership - Good

2014 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Improve learners’ progress and attainment particularly in mathematics by:
  • setting, recording and reviewing productive targets that are hard enough
  • providing all relevant tutors with training to enable them, where appropriate, to include the teaching of mathematics in vocational lessons
  • developing learners’ everyday arithmetic skills further to help them understand personal money matters
  • setting more complex tasks for more able learners particularly for intermediate level learners.
• Rapidly improve attendance by:
  • putting in place thorough arrangements to follow up diligently learners who miss lessons
  • setting individual challenging but realistic incremental improvement targets to eliminate unauthorised absence
  • ensuring absent learners are not at risk during the periods when they are expected to be in lessons
  • ensuring that the initiatives to improve attendance and reduce persistent absence focus closely on those learners who are at a risk of homelessness.
• Consolidate the recent improvements and strengthen strategic leadership by:
  • requiring the non-executive directors to set the highest expectations of the senior manager, and rigorously managing their performance to consistently raise learner’s achievement
  • strengthening arrangements to share good practice
  • replicating identified outstanding features from each centre across the provision, and
  • enhancing the self-assessment report further.

Chelmsford College - Good

2017 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Strengthen provision for teaching English and mathematics so that learners and apprentices improve the standard of their English skills and more learners achieve well and gain the high grades of which they are capable.
• Ensure that work-based tutors work effectively with apprentices aged 16 to 18 in order for them to complete their programmes within their expected timescales.
• Ensure that all learners, particularly adults, have a good understanding of the dangers from extremist groups and possible radicalisation.

Callywith College - Outstanding

2020 Full Inspection Report

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

Governors, leaders and managers have a clear and ambitious vision for the college. They have developed a curriculum which raises the aspirations and achievements of its students and improves the life chances of young people living in one of the poorest regions in the UK. Since the opening of Callywith College in September 2017, leaders, managers and staff have worked tirelessly to create a culture of high expectations for all. Their dedicated focus on relentlessly providing a wide range of carefully designed academic and vocational learning programmes, and high-quality teaching, assessment and support is highly successful. As a result of everyone’s combined efforts, almost all students who join the college stay on their programmes. They go on to make good or outstanding progress towards their curriculum and personal goals and achieve their qualifications.

Bradford College - Good

2017 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• As a matter of urgency, governors, leaders and managers should ensure that they address all the areas for improvement identified at the previous inspection. In particular, they should:
  • ensure that all learners on 16 to 19 study programmes have access to good-quality and relevant work experience
  • improve the progress that learners make so that all learners, including those who have high-needs funding, fulfil their potential.
• Leaders and managers should quicken the pace of improvement so that achievement rates on 16 to 19 study programmes increase rapidly.
• Teachers should ensure that they pay close attention to the needs of individual learners in the planning and delivery of teaching and in the assessment of learning, so that all learners, including those who have high-needs funding, make the progress of which they are capable.
• Leaders and managers should assess the quality of teaching, learning and assessment more realistically and take action to address the key areas for improvement.
• Leaders and managers should ensure that attendance increases, especially in English and mathematics lessons.

Blackburn with Darwen Adult Learning Service - Good

2010 Full Inspection Report

What does the Neighbourhoods and Learning Service need to do to improve further?

• Continue to improve the quality of teaching and learning by ensuring appropriate initial assessment and tutor’s good access to, and confident use of, ILT.
• Effectively promote the system of referral for information, advice and guidance to tutors and learners in all community venues to provide them with accurate information about progression. Monitor the uptake of this support to establish the scale of need and its impact on progression.
• Develop and implement an effective process to establish learners’ support needs before courses start so that these can be met from the first session.
• Introduce effective arrangements for monitoring learner progression and destinations to inform planning and quality improvement. Implement guidelines on the safe use of the internet. Complete feedback to learners on actions arising from their feedback. Establish the quality of teaching by full-time compared to casual part-time tutors.
• Promote consistently good attention to safety at all venues by ensuring security of access and maintenance of records of who is in the building.

Birkenhead Sixth Form College - Outstanding

2016 Full Inspection Report

What does the provider need to do to improve?

• Improve achievement rates on the very small minority of underperforming courses so that all students make at least good progress and achieve their aspirational target grades.
• Ensure that teachers provide opportunities to expand the knowledge of the small minority of students with an insufficiently wide understanding of diversity.

Bath College - Requires Improvement

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.

Askham Bryan College - Good

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.

Aquinas College - Good

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.

Andover College - Good

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.

Ada College (National College of Digital Skills) - Good

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.