What does the provider need to do to improve?
- Ensure that the quality of teaching and learning is consistently good across the college so that the proportion of students and apprentices who achieve their qualifications increases significantly.
- Make sure that students benefit from effective teaching in their English and mathematics lessons and that they maintain good attendance in these lessons.
- Improve the curriculum for students in receipt of high needs funding on the discrete programme to ensure that it is suitably personalised and ambitious and involves work-based experience.
- Ensure that students understand the risks of radicalisation and extremism at college, at work and in their everyday lives.
- Make sure that students benefit from a well-planned and continuing careers education curriculum that will help them to plan their future pathways.
- Promote the planned enrichment activities to ensure that students participate in wider learning that will enable them to broaden their horizons and interests and become active citizens.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Managers should provide clear guidance to learners and parents on the levels of attendance expected by the college and take swift action to help learners overcome barriers to attending regularly. Teachers should ensure that learners fully understand the importance of attending all lessons and should expect learners to attend regularly and punctually.
- Teachers should plan their lessons to ensure that learners, wherever possible, develop new skills and knowledge relevant to their aspirations and employment as well as those necessary to pass a course.
- Teachers should set work for learners that allows them to excel and achieve at the highest grades of which they are capable, and encourage learners to produce consistently work of the highest standard.
- Teachers’ feedback to learners should explain clearly how they can reach higher standards.
- Managers should ensure that courses which aim to prepare adults and learners with high needs for employment provide the opportunities they need to develop relevant skills, including work-related activities and/or work experience. Teachers should ensure that learners understand fully the demands of the industries and employment sectors that their courses prepare them for.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Improve the standard of teaching, learning and assessment so that learners on vocational and A-level programmes make good progress, achieve their qualifications and improve their chances of progressing to higher-level study or purposeful employment.
- Ensure that all teachers have high expectations of their learners and tailor activities to meet their individual needs, particularly the more able, so that they receive effective challenge and inspiration to make good progress and achieve their full potential.
- Ensure all teachers provide good opportunities for learners to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding independently in lessons without relying on direction from teachers.
- Improve attendance levels and urgently eliminate the disruption to lessons caused by poor punctuality, by teachers setting high expectations on attendance and punctuality with all learners and taking prompt action to support and challenge those whose attendance and punctuality is not good.
- Raise the standard of how all teachers promote English and mathematics within teaching, learning and assessment to ensure all learners develop these essential skills.
- Ensure teachers plan and use opportunities during learning consistently to raise learners and apprentices’ understanding of equality and the needs of diverse groups
- Ensure all learners on study programmes improve their work-related skills through meaningful work experience.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Raise the proportion of good or better lessons by:
- the regular use of initial assessment information to plan for each student’s needs
- ensuring more able students receive sufficient challenge to achieve their potential
- planning learning activities that develop students’ independent thinking and problem solving skills
- using information learning technologies (ILT) to support learning in and outside the classroom
- ensuring feedback to students on assessed work informs them how they can improve further
- teachers routinely developing students’ English and mathematical skills during lessons
- sharing good practice across the college more widely between teachers and through strengthening the links and communications between teachers and learning support assistants to provide support that is more effective.
- Further develop work experience for students on vocational courses to meet the skills needs of employers.
- Ensure students and apprentices receive regular reviews of their progress and ensure targets have sufficient detail to help them improve and achieve their potential.
- Raise the attendance and punctuality of students in functional skills lessons.
- Evaluate the recently introduced arrangements to improve staff performance.
- Raise students and apprentices’ awareness of equality and diversity during lessons and training.
What does South Essex College of Further and Higher Education need to do to improve further?
- Increase success rates by providing learners with clearer and more challenging targets, and checking their progress more frequently and effectively in lessons.
- Help learners make better progress by ensuring that teachers use information about learners’ prior attainment when planning lessons so that tasks are better matched to learners’ interests and abilities.
- Improve the quality of teaching and learning by encouraging teachers to make better use of ILT to consolidate learning and by making the VLE easier to use.
- Improve attendance by reviewing the effectiveness of attendance monitoring and following up absence more vigorously.
- Implement quality assurance arrangements consistently across all aspects of the college’s work and make the moderation of self-assessment reports more rigorous so that all grades are supported by accurate judgements.
- Sharpen the focus of governors on monitoring the curriculum and standards in the college and make sure that targets to support the drive for improvement are consistently realistic and challenging.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- success and attendance rates on a minority of courses
- the quality of the learning environment in a few areas of the college
- ensure that all students, especially the most able, are challenged to achieve their best.
n/a
What should be improved
- the low retention rates, particularly on level 1 qualifications
- teaching methods, to address the range of student needs and the nature of the learning environments
- impact of the quality assurance system in securing improvement.
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