What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Take rapid and effective action to tackle the college’s serious financial weaknesses in order to ensure the future sustainability of the quality of education.
- Ensure that managers gain effective oversight of apprenticeship provision and take appropriate action to make sure that staff take ownership for improving apprentices’ progress in the development of new knowledge, skills and behaviours.
- Effectively plan and coordinate apprentices’ on- and off-the-job training to ensure that the knowledge and skills that apprentices develop in training are well linked to workplace expectations and tasks.
- Ensure that all teachers focus on developing learners’ English skills by helping to improve learners’ knowledge and their ability to apply this knowledge to their work.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Improve performance in a very small number of courses where learner attendance and progress remain too low.
- Build on the successful improvements in discrete English and mathematics provision to ensure that outcomes for learners continue to improve at the same rapid rate as the rest of the college.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Take urgent action to reduce the proportion of teaching that is not yet good and ensure that the lesson observation process enables teachers to improve by:
- being clear about why learners are not making enough progress in their learning
- indicating clearly when and how support and professional development will help teachers to improve their practice
- setting clear milestones for implementing and reviewing the impact of improved teaching and learning strategies.
- Increase the proportion of learners who complete English and mathematics qualifications successfully by:
- making sure that all teachers understand the importance of these skills for helping learners to do well and succeed in their learning and career ambitions
- ensuring teachers are provided with training and guidance to embed English and mathematics in all learning more effectively
- inspiring ambition in those learners who are able to, to progress to and achieve higher levels of English and mathematics skills.
- Increase the proportion of learners and apprentices completing their qualifications successfully by:
- improving the management and organisation of administration, business management and health and social care apprentices’ programmes so they complete within the planned time
- systematically and regularly reviewing learners’ progress and setting clear and challenging targets to help them to improve their skills and knowledge and achieve their qualifications on college-based courses, particularly in construction and social sciences, where this is currently low.
- Develop teachers’ understanding of how to challenge the more able students to achieve high grades and exceed the grades expected of them, for example, through additional activities during lessons and setting targets in tutorials related to the achievement of high grades. Share more widely the examples that exist in a few subject areas of good practice in planning and teaching challenging lessons that enable all learners to reach their potential.
What does Gateshead College need to do to improve further?
- Ensure that college-wide strategies to increase the number of learners who stay and complete their qualifications are implemented rigorously so that the recent improvements are sustained and strengthened further. Monitor and keep a sharp focus on those areas where improvement needs to be more rapid.
- Evaluate fully the current process for developing learners’ literacy and numeracy skills and use this to inform a more coherent strategy that better equips learners for future employability. Raise attendance rates in all areas of the curriculum by ensuring a rigorous implementation of the college’s attendance policy.
- Review the process to provide support to help improve teachers’ performance, specifically those graded as satisfactory or better, by the college’s internal observation scheme. Evaluate fully the impact the support has had on the quality of teaching and learning.
- Improve the accuracy and rigour of self-assessment at curriculum and whole-college levels by taking much greater account of the importance of performance data. Incorporate thorough analysis of data, including the performance of different groups of learners, when making judgements. Increase the rigour of the moderation of self-assessment reports at all levels in the college.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- the slower pace of improvement in a few areas.
What should be improved
- the reliability of self-assessment
- the management information system
- pass and retention rates on low performing courses
- the monitoring of students' progress.
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