Waltham Forest College Inspection Recommendations

Waltham Forest College

Improve learners’ attendance by developing new strategies to tackle this problem; in particular, all teachers should reinforce the same high expectations on the importance of attendance at college.
Through staff development priorities:
- work with teachers to ensure a consistent and suitable level of detail and challenge in the targets they set for learners
- ensure that teachers provide suitably detailed feedback to learners so learners know what actions to take to improve their work.
Ensure that managers and teachers strengthen further their links with employers, use them to create further work experience opportunities for learners on study programmes, and ensure that learners use the work experience appropriately to develop their employability skills.
Extend the accessibility of careers guidance to apprentices more and, where appropriate, promote apprenticeships more widely as a career option for other learners.
Ensure that assessors work more closely with apprentices to raise their awareness of how to stay safe online.

Increase rapidly the proportion of learners who achieve their qualifications in English and mathematics.
Increase the proportion of learners on study programmes who achieve distinction and merit grades.
Improve the teaching of English on vocational programmes so that learners and apprentices develop the good skills in English that they need to be successful in learning and life.
Teachers should plan learning and assessment that focuses closely on the knowledge, skills and understanding that individual learners should develop.
Teachers must ensure that they comprehensively check that learning is taking place, and that learners are clear about the progress they have made.

Urgently improve teaching and learning in discrete English and mathematics lessons so that all learners have a much better chance of achieving these qualifications to enhance their employability. Teachers need to focus more on learners’ development needs in and between lessons; on extending the range of teaching, independent study and assessment methods used to make topics more interesting and relevant to learners’ main areas of study.
Ensure that attendance, behaviour, and punctuality are consistently good in all subject areas; emphasise to teachers the importance of setting clear expectations about attendance and punctuality as an important part of developing their employability skills.
Use the existing good partnerships with employers and many initiatives already in place to bring learners into contact with employers during their studies, to arrange work placements for learners in subjects where they currently do not exist so they can experience real-life commercial demands of the workplace.
Ensure managers at all levels improve action planning and performance management of staff in those subjects which perform poorly so that all learners have an equal chance of achieving successfully, and share more of the good practice of outstanding teachers to reduce the wide variations in the quality of teaching and learning.

Improve outcomes further by more rigorous action focused on the progress made by individuals in lessons in order to ensure all learners achieve their full potential.
Develop strategies to improve the quality of English and mathematics lessons, and ensure that all staff work cooperatively so that English and mathematics qualifications are an integral and relevant component of the vocational curriculum.
Improve the quality of learning in all lessons by ensuring that both teachers and lesson observers focus more deeply on assessing the impact of teaching on learning.
Set more ambitious and clearer targets to help learners to improve their work, know what they need to do to make further progress and achieve their full potential.
Ensure that self-assessment, particularly of teaching, learning and assessment at curriculum level, is more rigorous and leads to precise and measurable actions for improvements.
Through further effective staff training and performance management, ensure that all staff participate in, and are held accountable for, raising standards.

Increase success rates, particularly for learners aged 16 to 18, by consistently agreeing specific and challenging learning targets for individual learners that are reviewed regularly.
Improve the quality of teaching and learning by ensuring the procedures for observing teachers are moderated thoroughly and lead to accurate judgements, and that appropriate staff development is provided to improve all identified areas of weakness.
Improve the literacy and numeracy skills of learners by identifying the role of learning support assistants and involving them more clearly in the planning and delivery of lessons.
Improve the accuracy and effectiveness of the self-assessment process to identify and drive forward improvements at a faster rate and set more specific and challenging improvement targets which are monitored regularly.
Improve learners’ punctuality and attendance by making sure all staff provide sufficient challenge to learners to ensure good timekeeping and attendance.

The college should address:

low success rates for learners aged 16-18 at level 3 and from black Caribbean heritage
low key skills success rates
unsatisfactory provision in hospitality
insufficient opportunities for full-time learners to participate in work-related activities
variations in the effectiveness of the strategies to resolve attendance and punctuality issues
some drab and poor accommodation.