What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Use all available information about previous learning for students on college-ready programmes, and for adults and apprentices, to develop specific, individual knowledge and skills. Monitor closely the progress that students and apprentices make in developing these knowledge and skills.
- Develop the assessment of students’ and apprentices’ knowledge and skills to ensure that young people, including those with education, health and care plans on college-ready programmes, and apprentices, know what progress they have made and what they still need to master.
- Improve the usefulness of the feedback that teachers provide to young people and apprentices on their work, so they know what they need to do better.
- Develop additional appropriate enrichment opportunities and careers advice and guidance for adults and apprentices, so that they have an improved understanding of their chosen sectors and opportunities for employment and further and higher education in these sectors, or more widely in their communities.
What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Leaders must develop as a matter of urgency a sufficiently detailed and effective safeguarding risk assessment to cover the college’s estates; they should review these risks regularly to ensure that effective controls are in place and vulnerable students feel safer.
- Leaders and managers must ensure that communication between themselves, pastoral and teaching teams is effective. They must identify quickly those students who have poor attendance and who are at risk of not achieving or are vulnerable, and be sure to put the appropriate support mechanisms place.
- Leaders should ensure that all students on study programmes know about their entitlement to work experience and so can take up this opportunity.
- Leaders and managers should ensure that apprentices and employers understand the process of end-point assessment and how to achieve pass, merit or distinction grades to enable apprentices to achieve their potential.
- Leaders and managers should develop target setting in apprenticeships to ensure that all apprentices are supported to develop in all areas of the apprenticeship, including their behaviours.
- Leaders and managers need to speed up improvements to make sure that a greater proportion of apprentices’ achievement is constantly high.
- Governors should make sure that senior leaders are making identified quality improvements quickly enough.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Build upon the good teaching, learning and assessment to increase the proportion of outstanding lessons and reduce the proportion that require improvement. Ensure all lessons have sufficient challenge to meet the needs of all students, including the most able, so they can accelerate their progress. Ensure teachers always check learning frequently and effectively in lessons so that students develop well the consistent ability to analyse topics critically. Make sure teachers use information learning technology (ILT) imaginatively in more lessons to stimulate and improve students’ learning.
- Ensure planning for lessons is robust so that strategies for learning meet the needs of each student fully and at a good pace which engages and motivates students. Teachers to avoid over long explanations and ensure that students are fully involved in lessons by using a range of strategies to stimulate their thinking, involvement and contribution. Promote the development of students’ mathematical skills in non-mathematics related lessons.
- Review and improve the system for tracking students’ progress to ensure it is always clear, robust and drives students’ progress.
- Ensure managers analyse rigorously the quality of teaching, learning and assessment and plans to improve these area are clear and robust at subject area level, and that managers monitor the implementation of actions for improvement more effectively at subject area and college level.
- Actively promote diversity sensitively in lessons particularly by using naturally occurring opportunities to develop students’ wider understanding of issues.
- Review and improve staff appraisal by ensuring objectives are measureable and clearly link to the subject areas’ improvement plans and, where appropriate, to college targets. Make sure teachers understand their responsibility for improvement and they clearly understand their role in providing students with outstanding provision at all times.
- Ensure subject self-assessment reports have the same standards so reports are more evaluative and focus clearly on areas for improving all aspects of teaching, learning and assessment.
- Make sure lesson observations are effective in raising the standard of teaching, learning and assessment by focusing on the actions a teacher needs to take through providing targeted training and support to meet individual needs and by the frequent monitoring of the impact of actions for improvement.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- reversing the decline in success rates in 2006/07
- improving attendance and punctuality
- insufficient use of initial assessment
- shortcomings in the curriculum for key skills and personal, social and health education
- unsatisfactory aspects of accommodation and social space
- insufficient rigour in self-assessment and in the lesson observation process.
What should be improved
- the effectiveness of quality assurance arrangements
- enrichment and key skills
- social facilities for students
- the sharing of good practice between subject areas.
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