What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Ensure that the good teaching and learning in the college this year result in improved success rates, most importantly for AS-level students; ensure that a higher proportion of A-level students achieve high grades, making the progress of which they are capable.
- Increase the amount of outstanding teaching and learning by ensuring teachers use their good understanding of students’ abilities and needs to provide sufficiently interesting and high levels of challenging activities, so that all students’ knowledge is extended fully and they make good progress.
- Ensure that all A-level students have the opportunity to engage in purposeful external work experience, so that they develop further, career-related work skills and to enhance their already varied learning experiences at college.
- Ensure that leaders’ and managers’ progress monitoring of action plans from self-assessment, consistently judges the impact of actions taken, in order to improve outcomes for students.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Agree clear, specific and measurable targets in self-assessment and in performance management systems for individual accountability. Ensure that college-wide targets complement, and are aligned with, the key college mission, aims and objectives. Monitor their consistent implementation in all areas of the college rigorously.
- Improve the quality and consistency of teaching and learning by ensuring that planning for learning focuses on individual needs and is implemented in lessons. Encourage teachers to provide a wide range of active learning opportunities that interest and engage students of all abilities. Share best practice within the college to help all teachers develop highly effective questioning techniques to check on and extend students’ learning.
- Increase teachers’ expectations of their students so that they challenge students during lessons and through assignments to achieve at higher levels. Encourage students to make better progress in their learning and to attain higher grades than expected, based on their starting points.
- Introduce more effective quality assurance systems that prioritise improving teaching, learning and assessment throughout the college, but especially in the areas where students make poor progress. Ensure that managers at all levels monitor the implementation of the many new initiatives introduced to obtain a consistently positive impact across college.
- Monitor rigorously the quality of feedback on students’ assessed written work. Improve the standard and expectations of teachers’ comments to ensure that all students receive clear, specific and legible feedback that encourages them to improve their work.
- Strengthen and clarify the role of the achievement coaches. Ensure that all students have access to this support at least once a term. Articulate the purpose and advantages of this system so that all students are aware of it, can readily access it and know how best to use it.
- Reinforce the promotion of equality and diversity in lessons by identifying and monitoring this closely during lesson observations and learning walks. Provide clear examples for staff that enable them to learn from the good practice that exists.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Improve the progress that students make relative to their starting points and increase the achievement of high grades.
- Ensure that teachers are better able to assess the prior learning and skills of students in order to address their individual needs in lesson planning.
- Improve learning in some subjects by ensuring that students have sufficient opportunities to develop their own views rather than replicate those of the teacher.
- Decide on the standards of grammar and spelling expected in students’ work so that they can be applied consistently in marking.
- Improve the quality of provision within those subject areas which are underperforming by identifying the reasons why previous support and intervention strategies have had insufficient impact and providing well targeted support.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of staff development activity to ensure that its provision has a lasting impact on practice within lessons.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- low success rates on AS and level 2 courses by students aged 16 to 18
- low success rates on vocational courses
- underperformance by female students at level 2
- insufficient challenge in lessons to ensure that all students maximise their potential
- underdeveloped identification of language, literacy and numeracy needs
- underdeveloped work experience opportunities
- imprecise learning targets.
What should be improved
- the proportion of good and better teaching in several curriculum areas
- achievements in key skills
- students' attendance and punctuality
- provision of additional learning support
- impact of individual learning plans and target setting
- the rigour of several quality assurance processes.
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