What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Leaders and managers need to improve the teaching skills of assessors. Assessors need to support apprentices’ development and recall of key theoretical concepts. They need to ensure that apprentices can apply new learning to more complex workplace situations.
- Leaders and managers need to ensure that apprentices benefit from the same high-quality careers advice and guidance as adults and young people.
- Managers and teachers must improve the English and mathematics skills of young people, including those with high needs. Young people must attend their lessons. They must apply the same purpose to their English and mathematics learning as they do to their other studies.
- Leaders and managers need to increase the proportion of supported internship and employment opportunities for students with high needs.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Urgently ensure that processes to track and support learners’ progress are robust and accurate by ensuring that:
- staff take into account all aspects of learners’ progress towards achieving their qualifications, including attendance and progress in English and mathematics, and record these accurately
- managers intervene swiftly when learners struggle to make good progress.
- Improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment and outcomes for learners by ensuring that:
- teachers have high expectations of what their learners can achieve and put in place well-considered teaching to enable learners to reach their potential
- teachers intervene quickly when learners fall behind with their work and plan effective actions to help them catch up
- teachers set demanding tasks and activities that challenge learners to make rapid progress.
- Urgently make sure that all learners attend their lessons regularly.
- Make certain that all learners following study programmes who are ready take up relevant and well-planned work experience.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Urgently improve the levels of learners’ attendance by teachers setting high expectations for all learners and taking prompt action to support and challenge those whose attendance is not good.
- Leaders to rectify all the areas for improvement identified at the previous inspection by ensuring:
- teachers use all information on learners to plan teaching, learning and assessment that challenges learners to make the progress of which they are capable
- teachers set precise targets that challenge their learners to improve their understanding and application of underpinning theory, accelerate their learning and excel
- managers assess the quality of teaching, learning and assessment through measuring accurately and frequently the extent of learners’ progress against appropriate achievement and ‘stretch’ targets
- observers evaluate thoroughly the impact of teaching, learning and assessment on the progress made by learners, when conducting observations of teachers’ practice
- teachers of English and mathematics improve their teaching, use the findings of regular assessment to identify learners’ skills gaps and ensure these learners hone the required techniques and approaches both in lessons and through independent work in order to make good progress
- teachers and assessors are trained to develop the confidence to routinely promote learners’ and apprentices’ understanding of equality, diversity and the importance of British values.
- Teachers set their learners sufficient work outside of lessons and challenge learners to develop their knowledge and skills further by working independently on a frequent basis.
- Learners on study programmes have the opportunity to develop their work-related skills through planned work experience.
What does the college need to do to improve further?
- Teachers should ensure that information from assessments at the start and during a student’s course informs planning for individual learning appropriately and that lesson activities meet the needs of different students well. Teachers should use the detailed information on individual students’ needs to provide learning that is sufficiently challenging for all to make good progress.
- Ensure that every course has strong links with local and community organisations and businesses so that all students on the study programme have the possibility of receiving meaningful work experience that will prepare them for work.
- Increase the impact of the observations of teaching and learning by ensuring a better focus on learning so that observers identify detailed and specific actions to improve teaching and learning rapidly.
- Ensure that managers set targets to improve performance that are sufficiently precise and their reports on progress focus on the impact of actions they have taken.
- Ensure that teachers develop creative ways of exploring what it means to be part of a diverse society through subject material and discussions in classes, to broaden and deepen students’ understanding of diversity.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Raise the standard of teaching, learning and assessment through improving the observation scheme, with prompt improvement actions and an increased focus on the integration of equality and diversity themes into lessons and apprenticeship reviews.
- Improve assessment planning, feedback following assessment and the use of challenging targets for students in order to enable them to make better progress relative to their prior attainment and retain more students on courses.
- Raise the standard of the teaching of English and the support teachers provide in developing students’ skills in the use of English and mathematics in vocational lessons.
- Develop appraisal to ensure that it fully evaluates teachers’ performance and their impact on increasing students’ success. Ensure that managers set and review clear and measurable objectives for their staff, and develop middle managers’ skills in appraising the performance of staff.
- Develop strategic planning so that clear milestones and timescales underpin strategic objectives and that managers measure progress in achieving these by an appropriate range of key performance indicators. Ensure managers use performance targets more widely and consistently across all aspects of provision.
- Increase the extent to which self-assessment is evaluative and link areas for improvement to specific actions within the quality improvement plan that relate to better students’ outcomes.
What does Lowestoft College need to do to improve further?
- Maintain the high priority given to increasing the retention of learners by reinforcing the use of specific and challenging targets for retention at college and subject levels.
- Introduce measures to evaluate the progress made by learners compared to their starting points by using prior attainment data to set target grades and analysing progression rates between levels of study to measure learners’ progress over time.
- Embed the strengthened arrangements for timely assessment and regular monitoring of progress of employment-based learners, including through contractual arrangements with consortium partners.
- Make sure that teachers give sufficient priority to the development of learners’ independent learning skills, literacy and numeracy so that teachers’ raise their expectations and learners can take more control of their own learning.
- Ensure that all learners have sufficiently precise and challenging academic targets and assessment procedures are fully effective in helping them to achieve these. Strengthen the policy guidance on improving learners’ grammar and spelling and ensure that all teachers use a consistently effective approach.
- Ensure quick identification of all learners at risk of not completing their course. Make sure that clear and effective actions for individual learners are in place to support and monitor them closely so that more remain on their courses and are successful.
- Set specific, challenging but realistic targets in action plans for improvement, which are measurable in terms of their impact on learners’ outcomes.
- Increase the promotion of equality and diversity within the curriculum on college-based courses and reviews in work-based learning.
- Embed improved arrangements to ensure the accurate use of reliable data. Further develop the analysis of data so that it can be used fully effectively and with complete confidence by all staff and governors to monitor and evaluate all aspects of learners’ experiences at the college.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- success rates for adults at level 1
- the integration of the skills for life strategy in all curriculum areas
- the variety in teaching strategies to meet the needs of all learners
- the setting and monitoring of targets which challenge learners and promote improvement
- the more systematic use of data on learners’ prior attainment to measure progress.
What should be improved
- pass and retention rates on some courses
- achievement of key skills qualifications
- timely completion of apprenticeship frameworks
- sharing of good practice in teaching and learning
- links between skills for life and key skills
- some unsatisfactory accommodation.
What should be improved
- quality of teaching and learning, particularly for students aged 16 to 18
- students' achievements
- curriculum management
- quality assurance arrangements
- provision in literacy and numeracy, engineering and work-based learning
- teaching and management of key skills
- tutorial provision
- assessment and monitoring of students' progress
- students' attendance
- monitoring of equal opportunities.
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