MidKent College Inspection Recommendations

MidKent College

Leaders and managers should improve the quality of apprenticeship courses by:
- improving the testing of learning so that staff check in more detail how well apprentices develop their knowledge
- increasing the level of challenge for those apprentices who miss deadlines or do not attend their off-the-job training
- improving target-setting so that staff set challenging targets which focus on developing apprentices’ skills, knowledge and behaviours
- improving the level of apprentices’ literacy and numeracy skills by ensuring that they all practise and develop these skills in both the classroom and the workplace.
Improve further teaching, learning and assessment in GCSE English and mathematics classes so that a higher proportion gain grades 4 to 9, ensuring that students complete work that challenges them and helps them improve their skills.
Ensure that attendance continues to improve in all areas of the curriculum, and particularly for students studying English and mathematics.

Leaders and managers should reduce the wide variations in achievement across ages, levels and subject areas so that all students and apprentices achieve well.
Leaders and managers should strengthen English and mathematics teaching to ensure that students develop the skills and achieve qualifications that enhance their learning and career options.
Managers should apply relentlessly strategies to improve attendance and punctuality further to increase students’ opportunities to make good progress.
All college staff should ensure effective use of well-defined and measurable targets for improvement in every aspect of college operation.
Teachers should ensure that they use students’ initial assessments to challenge individuals and ensure they can fulfil their potential.

Reinforce with students the importance of good attendance and the need to arrive at lessons on time as important employability skills. Ensure teachers set clear expectations regarding students’ attendance and punctuality.
Ensure teachers set students demanding work that is not too easy for them to complete. Use challenging targets and clear feedback in students’ assessed work to make sure students know how to improve their performance further.
Improve English and mathematics provision across the college by ensuring all teachers are sufficiently qualified in these subjects; better coordinate these subjects where they are taught in discrete lessons and when incorporated into vocational and academic lessons. Clarify responsibilities of staff in making sure students attend GCSE and functional skills lessons.
Ensure that managers at all levels improve their skills in using a range of information, including published data, to evaluate students’ overall progress and to intervene rapidly where performance is weaker.
Review and reduce the range of quality assurance and self-assessment processes to focus more sharply on evaluating the quality of teaching over time and its relationship to students’ progress and outcomes.
Ensure that curriculum managers at all levels take responsibility, and are held accountable, for students’ progress on all elements of their study programmes.

The college should address: