What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Leaders and managers should support vocational staff to monitor more closely students’ attendance in the English and mathematics areas of their study programmes. Staff must ensure that students understand the importance of these classes and the important employment skills they bring.
- Apprenticeship managers should improve the monitoring of apprentices’ progress in sub-contracted provision, so interventions can be made to ensure that a greater number make good progress and complete their courses within the expected time. Managers must also make sure that all employers in subcontracted provision give apprentices sufficient off-the-job training time to work on theoretical aspects of their programmes.
- Refresh information technology hardware so that all students, apprentices and teachers can use good quality up-to-date resources that reflect sector expectations.
- Ensure that all staff benefit from a constructive development programme that allows them to update their vocational and/or industry and pedagogical skills and to identify and share good practice.
- Improve management information systems so that college leaders and managers can make fully informed decisions about the performance of provision and about students’ attendance.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- In order to improve success rates and students’ progress:
- make sure that teachers provide activities in lessons which meet differing needs and abilities, particularly for students aged 16 to 18 on advanced courses, and for adult students on intermediate courses;
- ensure that all teachers demonstrate high expectations by setting students realistic but challenging targets, which focus sharply on how to improve, are regularly monitored and reviewed, and aim for high achievement and added value;
- rapidly improve the quality of the college’s in-house apprenticeship and work-based courses, by monitoring learners’ progress more accurately, and rapidly supporting learners at risk of not completing their programme on schedule;
- regularly monitor the performance of different groups of learners, and take effective action to improve outcomes for underperforming groups.
- In order to improve teaching, learning and assessment:
- ensure that teachers on A-level courses, and in theory lessons on vocational courses, use initial assessment information and prior attainment data to plan work that challenges students and better meets their ability levels;
- co-ordinate learning and assessment opportunities better within the workplace, through the setting of specific short- and medium-term learning targets for all students;
- ensure that all teachers provide detailed feedback when marking students’ work, to inform them precisely what they need to do to improve the quality of their work;
- develop teachers’ skills and confidence in the teaching of English and mathematics, and in how to promote equality and diversity in lessons.
- In order to improve leadership and management:
- ensure that sound evidence is used during self-evaluation and action planning, and that judgements are based on high expectations for students’ outcomes, high quality teaching, learning and assessment, and effective leadership and management;
- increase the proportion of good or better teaching, learning and assessment across the college by using the lesson observation system to identify, monitor and disseminate best practice.
What does Brooklands College need to do to improve further?
- Maintain the momentum of improvement for learners’ success rates, by building on the good practice demonstrated in higher performing subjects and by continuing with the strategies to keep learners on their courses.
- Ensure that teachers in lessons make more precise and frequent checks on all learners’ learning and progress, by more consistent use of questioning directed to individual learners.
- Provide more training to help teachers make better use of detailed information they receive about their learners so that they can plan learning activities which ensure that they all make appropriate progress compared to their prior learning.
- Ensure that all teachers successfully integrate the promotion of equality and diversity into their lessons.
- Improve the skills of course teams to self-assess the quality of their provision, in order to support further improvements and raise achievements.
What does Brooklands College need to do to improve further?
- Analyse carefully at all levels why too many students aged 16 to 18 fail to gain their main qualification, and on the basis of this intelligence take uncompromising action to improve the educational outcomes of present and future students. Pay particular attention to why some GCE A-level success rates are so poor and take urgent steps to improve them.
- Ensure that the self-assessment and quality improvement processes from course level up to overall college level are scrupulous, incisive and accurate. Make proper use of data, including those on students’ progress, to compare performance at Brooklands with similar colleges elsewhere.
- Spread the better teaching practices in lessons more systematically and effectively to show weaker teachers how they might improve. Support and train these teachers in more active teaching strategies so that all students become more directly involved in what they say and do in lessons.
- Use the more effective leadership and management practices in stronger subject areas of the college to support and guide those responsible for less successful areas so that they are able to make the changes necessary to improve results for their students.
- Develop further the capacity for information and learning technologies to enliven teaching and to facilitate independent learning by students when they are not in the classroom, studio or workshop. Share the best practices to be found in this approach with those who currently lack the confidence or competence to use them.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- pace of implementation of actions to bring about improvement
- proportion of good or better lessons
- rigour of implementation of lesson observation procedures
- success rates on key skills programmes
- success rates in work-based learning provision
- co-ordination of skills for life strategy
What should be improved
- the proportion of students who complete courses successfully
- management information systems
- methods for measuring students’ performance (value-added)
- teaching in some subject areas
- the implementation of quality assurance arrangements
- the state of some of the accommodation.
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