What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Leaders and managers should continue to improve the quality of education that apprentices receive, to ensure that they complete their apprenticeship successfully and achieve grades of which they are capable.
- Managers should ensure that learners studying English and mathematics attend their lessons more frequently, in order to improve their knowledge and skills development, so that they achieve their very best in these qualifications.
- Leaders and managers should improve the tracking of skills and behaviours of learners with high needs who are on discrete employability courses. They need to ensure that teachers plan and monitor the skills learners develop in preparation for their next steps.
- Leaders, managers and teachers should ensure that all learners and apprentices receive feedback which is clear and developmental so that learners and apprentices improve the standard of their work over time.
- Leaders should ensure that all learners and apprentices are aware of the range of opportunities available to them after they complete their studies so that they can make suitably informed decisions for their futures.
What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Increase the proportion of apprentices who achieve their qualifications in the planned time, by:
- senior leaders having an oversight of apprentices’ progress by monitoring closely the progress that apprentices make and ensuring interventions are made speedily when they fall behind
- assessors setting clear and challenging targets and reviewing the progress apprentices make against these so that all apprentices make good progress from their starting points
- ensuring that assessors improve the progress apprentices make by planning their on and off-the-job training so that activities are ambitious, interesting and relevant.
- Teachers should ensure that they set suitably demanding work for students. In particular, teachers should ensure that they challenge the most able students to make the progress of which they are capable.
- Leaders, managers and staff should continue to focus their improvement strategies on underperforming courses. They should increase the proportion of students who achieve their qualifications and in particular increase the number who achieve higher grades in GCSE English and mathematics and on all advanced-level courses.
- Leaders and managers should ensure that learners and apprentices have a more secure understanding of how they can apply to their daily lives and at work their knowledge of the risks of radicalisation and extremism.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Raise the standard and consistency of teaching, learning and assessment, particularly on those areas that are not yet good and improve outcomes on courses that are not yet performing in line with national rates by sharing good practice from high-performing areas with those areas that are under-performing.
- Increase the quality of provision in English and mathematics by ensuring all teachers acquire the skills they need to promote and develop students' literacy and numeracy skills more effectively in lessons.
- Make sure that all students are clear about the progress they are making and how they can improve through ensuring teachers raise the standard and consistency of target setting and written feedback.
- Provide more opportunities in lessons for students to promote their understanding of equality and diversity.
- Develop further managers’ use of data to help identify priorities for improvement by:
- increasing the use of value-added data to establish better the level of students’ progress relative to their starting points
- the better monitoring and evaluation of progression data to assess students’ progression to employment.
What does the college need to do to improve further?
- Raise teachers’ expectations of learners’ standards of work, skills development and attitudes. Ensure they consistently seek to extend learners’ knowledge and skills beyond the basic qualification requirements so that more learners make good or better progress. Set challenging targets for learners across all of the provision.
- Make sure that staff focus on developing learners’ employability skills alongside their vocational skills so that learners are well prepared for future employment. Promote good attendance and punctuality vigorously.
- Support all staff and particularly teachers, to improve the quality of written feedback provided to learners including ensuring that spelling and grammar are consistently corrected.
- Promote the development of learners’ English and mathematical skills by supporting teachers to maximise opportunities to encourage learners to use technical language confidently, develop their vocabulary and increase learners’ application of mathematical skills in their vocational work. Support this work by reviewing and finalising the associated strategy so that the significant features and procedures are clear.
- Implement fully the planned revisions to the curriculum including reviewing entry requirements for intermediate level courses and ensuring that programmes of study are tailored appropriately to learners’ needs and circumstances.
- Revise the approach to ensure a more systematic follow up on actions for improvement particularly to support teachers to improve their practice to be good or better and encourage them to use a wider range of teaching strategies to full effect.
- Raise the standard of teachers’ planning for the exploration of equality and diversity themes in lessons in a vocational context and ensure they are better equipped to exploit opportunities for this development when they arise during lessons.
- Ensure that the detailed analysis of performance data for different groups of learners leads to precise and concerted actions to tackle the underachievement of specific groups of learners.
- Establish measurable targets for the new strategic plan to include the ongoing review of the curriculum, the improvement of outcomes for learners and the return to financial sustainability.
- Develop self-assessment so that the quality of work-based learning is evaluated thoroughly by subject and overall. Increase the robustness of evidence used as a basis for judgements in college-based subject areas and ensure that managers undertake rigorous evaluation to identify the root causes of underperformance and areas of good practice clearly.
What does City of Wolverhampton College need to do to improve further?
- Urgently raise success rates for all groups of students by ensuring that attendance and progress are more effectively monitored and by providing more effective support to ensure that students complete all the requirements of their course in order to achieve the intended qualification aim.
- Enhance the quality of teaching and learning by ensuring that teaching is planned to meet individual students’ needs and ability levels. Use teaching strategies that motivate and engage students in memorable learning activities. Ensure that students are sufficiently challenged to make good progress and achieve well.
- Ensure that all teachers provide detailed feedback to students at timely intervals that clearly inform them of what they need to do to improve their work, to make progress and to achieve to their full potential.
- Increase the proportion of students progressing from one level to the next by providing timely advice and guidance and by raising students’ aspirations and expectations. Reduce the number of students leaving the college with an unknown destination by accurately collecting progression data.
- Significantly strengthen guidance and support arrangements to ensure that initial advice and guidance adequately inform students of course requirements and expectations by producing detailed course information literature and by developing the knowledge and skills of staff providing information.
- Strengthen tutorial provision to enhance the effectiveness of the support provided in monitoring students’ progress and attendance by introducing clearly defined procedures for staff to follow and by quality assuring the process.
- Significantly enhance the effectiveness of governance, leadership and management by implementing improvement actions to remedy the weaknesses identified at inspection. Rapidly improve success rates and the financial health of the college to ensure continued viability of provision.
- Enhance the quality of self-assessment and increase the rigour and consistency of quality assurance arrangements by providing training for leaders and managers in monitoring and evaluation practice. Develop managers so they are able to implement improvement actions in a systematic and timely manner.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- standards of literacy and numeracy throughout the college
- success rates in work-based learning
- insufficiently challenging targets for learners
- the quality of accommodation and resources to support learning in a minority of areas.
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What should be improved
- retention rates for students aged 16 to 18, particularly at level 1
- extent of good or better teaching
- poor teaching in some areas which fails to interest and motivate students
- poor attendance and punctuality amongst students
- consistency of impact of quality assurance procedures at course level.
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