What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Improve the attainment and progress of non-White British students, those with learning difficulties, and those who are from financially disadvantaged backgrounds by:
- implementing consistently the new risk assessment and support arrangements for these students
- reviewing carefully the reasons for the underperformance of these groups to identify any factors that lead to slower progress and lower attainment, including progression from Year 12 to Year 13.
- Increase the proportion of students with lower prior attainment who complete the full two-year study programme by analysing the reasons for lower progression from Year 12 to Year 13, and identifying and implementing approaches that lead to improvements.
- Place renewed focus on helping teachers to:
- provide more challenging activities for students to ensure that they think even more deeply
- use questioning more effectively so that all students are helped to extend their knowledge, especially those who may be finding topics difficult.
- Increase the proportion of students who participate in well-planned work experience by:
- targeting more effectively those students who would benefit from this experience
- strengthening and broadening links with employers to increase the range of available opportunities.
- Strengthen quality assurance processes, particularly lesson observations, to ensure that managers develop a deeper understanding of the impact on students’ progress of the different techniques used by teachers.
What does the college need to do to improve further?
- Equip teachers with the skills and data they require to monitor students’ progress in relation to their prior attainment and to intervene swiftly when progress is not rapid enough.
- Provide teachers with training to plan lessons that challenge all students in order that a higher proportion successfully achieves both their qualifications and high grades.
- Ensure that teachers have a thorough understanding of the range of assessment activities that they can use during lessons to monitor students’ progress and that they implement them well.
- Share the good practice that already exists to promote more thoughtful questioning by all teachers in all lessons.
- Ensure that all teachers give students enough meaningful work to do outside their lessons so that students consolidate their understanding and gain a wider interest in the subject.
- Teachers must assess work more thoroughly so that students know exactly what they have achieved and what they need to do to improve.
- Improve the usefulness of the targets teachers set for students by ensuring that teachers identify what each student needs to work on and then set appropriate targets.
- Equip the managers who make judgements about the quality of teaching, learning and assessment with a broader range of criteria on which to base their judgements other than just the graded observation of lessons.
- Governors and leaders should ensure that those managers that are currently underperforming receive appropriate training and better management of their performance so that they are more able to evaluate and improve provision and become properly accountable for students’ achievements.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- students’ progress compared to their prior attainment at GCSE
- a minority of underperforming courses
- the strategic monitoring of equal opportunities data on the performance of different groups
- a minority of teaching where students are insufficiently stretched and challenged.
What should be improved
- retention rates in some AS-level subjects in 2004
- sharing of good practice between subject areas
- use of information and learning technology (ILT)
- the integration of key skills provision.
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