What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Improve further the quality of teaching, learning and assessment to ensure that teachers inspire and motivate learners to achieve their very best, enabling a higher proportion of them to achieve their qualifications, particularly younger learners at levels 1 and 2.
- Ensure that teachers help learners to develop their skills in English and mathematics by providing them with strategies to improve the specific skills in which they are not yet proficient.
- Improve further learners’ attendance and punctuality at lessons by setting high expectations for attendance, intervening swiftly when learners do not attend and supporting learners to attend most of their lessons.
What does the college need to do to improve further?
- Ensure that governors, the Principal and senior leaders decide very quickly how they are going to improve the quality of provision and put in place actions to secure rapid progress.
- Ensure that governors have sufficient expertise and experience to hold senior leaders to account for the improvements that are required.
- Ensure that managers at all levels receive accurate and timely performance data, and develop their skills to interpret the information so they can intervene swiftly when improvements are required.
- Enable managers to make accurate judgements about the quality of teaching, learning and assessment by focusing on what learners are doing and how much progress they are making, both in lessons and over time.
- Increase the numbers of learners who benefit from work placements; ensure that learners reflect on what they have learned while at work and that managers evaluate the impact of work experience more carefully.
- For learners aged 16 to 19, ensure that each component of their study programme is tailored both to develop the skills they need and to achieve the qualifications they require to progress.
- Ensure all teachers have high expectations of what learners can achieve; teachers must set ambitious and challenging targets for learners and then carefully monitor their progress towards these.
- Develop teachers’ skills in planning and implementing interesting and stimulating learning activities so that all learners make at least good progress.
- Implement effective actions to improve attendance and punctuality; closely monitor the attendance patterns of different groups of learners and analyse reasons for poor attendance.
- Rapidly improve the numbers of learners who achieve the qualifications they need in English and mathematics by:
- ensuring all learners take a course appropriate to their starting point
- ensuring teachers plan learning that takes account of what learners can and cannot already do
- equipping all vocational teachers with the skills and confidence to improve learners’ English and mathematics in their lessons.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Ensure staff take urgent action to improve students’ attendance and punctuality by setting high expectations and consistently following up absences quickly to ensure students understand the standards expected of them.
- Improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment by:
- setting high expectations for students in all lessons
- using assessment to motivate students and challenge them to produce work of the highest standards
- ensuring teachers check that students have understood the skills and knowledge they have been taught and then practise these.
- Improve the English and mathematics skills that students develop and the proportion that successfully achieve their qualification.
- Initially assess students’ skills and knowledge on entry and then use this information to:
- plan lessons that ensure all students make progress using learning materials and activities that are appropriate to their ability
- ensure students with additional support needs are provided quickly with the support they require.
- Ensure college leaders set clear targets and actions for managers to improve rapidly the quality of the courses they manage and hold managers accountable for progress towards achieving these targets.
What does Stanmore College need to do to improve further?
- Increase success rates in GCSE English and mathematics at grades A* to C through the use of improved assessment procedures which support learners to complete tasks under examination conditions.
- Improve the independent study skills of learners by helping them to understand how to reinforce their learning independently.
- Ensure that class sizes are appropriate, especially for entry level programmes, to enable teachers to provide learners with sufficient individual support and challenge.
What does Stanmore College need to do to improve further?
- Ensure all staff working with literacy and numeracy students employ stimulating and challenging learning activities so that all students participate fully, make good progress and succeed. Increase the use of relevant learning materials to encourage students in their skills.
- Ensure that, across the college, more probing questioning is used that challenges students’ knowledge and enables students to demonstrate a deeper understanding of their subject. Ensure that all lessons stretch the more able students to help them to achieve higher grades and reach their full potential.
- In literacy and numeracy, use initial and diagnostic assessment more effectively to set targets for the development of individuals’ skills and to aid detailed lesson planning. Involve students in recognising, recording and evaluating their own progress and in setting new targets to improve their performance.
- Ensure that managers moderate lesson observations more effectively to provide the college with an accurate view of the quality of teaching and learning. Monitor the progress of improvement actions resulting from observations so that appropriate support can be provided to staff in a more timely manner.
- Make better routine use of data to set, monitor and review more detailed targets, to ensure improvements in the quality of provision. In particular, routinely and critically examine the effectiveness of actions taken to improve the progress of students on AS courses and literacy and numeracy programmes.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- low success rates on some courses and in key skills
- variable quality of academic support
- further improvement of the quality of teaching and learning
- the management and quality of skills for life and key skills
- weaknesses in self-assessment and action planning
- development of more ambitious improvement agenda.
What should be improved
- the proportion of students who complete their courses
- attendance rates, particularly in the adult college
- key skills provision
- accommodation in some curriculum areas
- support for students for whom English is not their first language
- class sizes and space utilization
- the collection and use of management information.
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