What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Use staff training and quality improvement activities to ensure that teachers plan lessons carefully, taking into account learners’ starting points and information from assessment, so that activities are interesting and challenging for all learners.
- Provide training, support and challenge for teachers so that they are better able to agree specific and challenging targets with learners that help them to understand how to make good progress in developing new skills and achieving their goals.
- Increase the proportion of learners that achieve English and mathematics qualifications by:
- ensuring that learners attend lessons in these subjects more frequently
- further developing effective strategies to identify gaps in learners’ knowledge and ensuring that teachers focus on individual learners’ areas of weakness.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- In instances where the attendance, retention and in-year achievement of students falls away, take prompt action to ensure that a higher proportion of students achieve their qualification.
- To help students achieve well in foundation English and mathematics further increase the staff development and support and ensure that individual students, particularly in functional skills classes, are clearer on what they need to do to
- Fully implement the procedures that are aimed at encouraging students to achieve their aspirational grades, and in GCSE English and mathematics courses make the achievement of an A* to C grade an absolute priority.
- Implement the improvements to the college’s IT systems planned for summer 2014 and then, with a more reliable system, renew the drive to enable and encourage staff to use appropriate technology to support and extend students’ knowledge.
What does the college need to do to improve further?
- Raise success rates on college-based courses by ensuring all students are set challenging targets based on prior attainment information, initial assessment results and taking account of their previous experience. Ensure learners attend regularly and punctually. Motivate learners to exceed their targets and to aspire to higher levels.
- Increase the proportion of high-quality teaching by ensuring that all teachers plan teaching strategies which engage students and meet different levels of ability. Increase the level of challenge for all students in lessons. Support all teachers to provide, as the best ones do already, a wide range of activities that engage and interest students.
- Make better use of the skills of good and outstanding teachers within the college to develop teaching and learning practice more widely so that the overall quality of teaching improves and there is more consistency in students’ learning experiences.
- Raise the pass rates and the proportion of high grades on English and mathematics qualifications. Revise the current literacy and numeracy strategy to ensure that all teachers take responsibility for developing students’ English and mathematical skills. Share the good practice that exists in sport to embed English into vocational lessons. Provide support for teachers so they can help students to enjoy developing their mathematical skills.
- Challenge managers more robustly and check underpinning evidence when assessing college performance and reviewing progress on actions taken to improve performance. Focus more on the evaluation of outcomes of actions taken to improve. Make more effective use of the accurate and widely available college data to set specific and challenging targets for further improvement. Ensure that action plans are sufficiently detailed and include essential milestones for measuring progress.
- Encourage the wider promotion of equality and diversity in lessons by improving the knowledge and confidence of staff in discussing and debating equality and diversity themes. Ensure curriculum planning incorporates the promotion of equality and diversity consistently and that naturally occurring opportunities are fully exploited to further develop students’ knowledge and to challenge stereotypical views.
What does Hartlepool College need to do to improve further?
- Further improve success rates on intermediate and advanced level programmes for adult learners, on short courses and in some subject areas.
- Further improve the achievement of high grades and minimum target grades in some subject areas.
- Extend the range of opportunities for learners to develop their advocacy skills in order to enhance their ability to contribute to their communities and to represent the views of their peers.
- Continue to improve the quality of theory teaching and extend the interactive use of ILT to enhance learning.
- Ensure more effective promotion of aspects of equality and diversity through teaching and on reviews for apprentices.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- success rates for 16-18 year olds at level 3
- approaches to the achievement of key skills
- further development of the Skills for Life strategy
- arrangements to evaluate the performance of the governing body
- promotion of equality and diversity
What should be improved
- staff access to centrally held data
- small class sizes in some areas of learning
- completion rates for modern apprenticeship frameworks
- effective dissemination of good practice across the college
- links with those employers engaged in work-based training
- quality of schemes of work in some areas of learning.
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