What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Ensure that all learners gain the necessary qualifications in English and mathematics by checking they attend all their English and mathematics lessons, and they benefit from teachers fully integrating both English and mathematics into vocational lessons. Raise the profile and importance of learners achieving qualifications in English and mathematics by working with employers and parents.
- Provide further development for staff teams in subjects which are not yet good and ensure that they learn from higher-performing teams within the college.
- Develop managers’ skills in assessing the quality of teaching, learning and assessment using a wide range of indicators in addition to annual lesson observations. Monitor the quality of assessor practice for apprentices and the impact of additional learning support. Encourage teachers to reflect regularly on their practice.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Urgently improve governance, building on the steps already taken to implement new checks and balances within the college, so that governors have the necessary financial expertise and confidence to ensure that future decisions about the college’s spending and resources do not place the college at risk.
- Urgently change the way in which senior managers determine the strategic direction of the college so that they set business objectives and put curriculum plans in place which will ensure the long-term sustainability and viability of the college.
- Take immediate steps to reduce expenditure and to generate additional revenue where possible, in order to build on the recent good work already carried out by current senior leaders in implementing a realistic financial recovery plan.
- Build on productive actions to increase the number of learners that successfully complete their qualifications, to ensure that the remaining lower achievement is speedily corrected, especially in the small number of AS-level subjects.
- Build on the successful work to improve learners’ achievement of functional skills in English and mathematics, and to ensure further improvement of learners’ high grade achievement in GCSE English and mathematics.
- Extend best practice in the planning of lessons to ensure that teachers make better use of information about learners’ previous and current progress when planning learning.
- Improve learners’ progress to a consistently high level by ensuring that their targets for improvement are more specific, informing them how and what to do to attain their goals.
- Fully consider the performance of teachers in lessons when carrying out their appraisals to sharpen the rigour of performance management.
What does the provider need to do to improve further?
- Increase the proportion of good and better teaching and learning by:
- ensuring that teachers clearly understand how to meet the needs of all students in lessons
- ensuring that assessment activities are challenging and sufficiently detailed to enable all students to meet their targets
- improving the use of information and learning technology (ILT) in order to involve learners more effectively.
- Focusing lesson observations on key areas for improvement, with the resulting development plans clearly reflecting those areas and linked robustly to professional development.
- Planning lessons that effectively integrate English, mathematics and equality and diversity into vocationally relevant contexts
- Improve the provision in foundation English by:
- improving outcomes for students by developing the expertise of teachers, helping them to teach English effectively and ensuring that they have suitable specialist qualifications
- ensuring that teaching meets the varying needs and abilities of all students.
- Fully implement plans to ensure management and quality assurance are of the highest standard in all subject areas.
What does Weymouth College need to do to improve further?
- Improve the quality of teaching, through the lesson observation system and staff training, so that it focuses on learning and leads to demonstrable improvements in students’ progress and achievement.
- Ensure quality assurance is sufficiently evaluative and accurate and takes account of national developments in order to drive further improvement in curriculum planning and teaching and learning.
- Improve links with employers to give more students opportunities for vocationally relevant experience.
- Ensure additional learning support is targeted precisely so that those who receive it achieve as well as they are able.
- Share best practice in the promotion of equality and diversity in teaching and learning so that all staff and students benefit from a greater understanding of other cultures.
Areas for improvement
The college should address:
- raising standards and achievement
- success rates on AS level
- target setting and use of individual learning plans
- the promotion of equality and diversity themes
- the greater involvement of learners in decision-making.
What should be improved
- pass and retention rates on some courses
- the quality of teaching and learning in some curriculum areas
- tutorial support for students
- provision for literacy and numeracy
- curriculum management in some areas
- arrangements for monitoring and evaluating the quality of provision
- the quality of self-assessment reports
- the use of management information
- students' attendance at lessons
- access to buildings for students with restricted mobility
- key skills provision
- additional learning support.
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