The Coleg Powys Experience

Coleg Powys piloted the new inspection framework in November The inspection was learner centred and focused on pre- established lines of enquiry. The Subject Area Reports (SARs) and the Institutional Review were key to the process. Coleg Powys feels that the judgments were true and gave a fair view of the college given the time they had.

 Excellent – Many strengths, including significant examples of sector leading practice – to be excellent you need to be 15% above the national comparator  Good – Many strengths and no important short comings  Adequate – Strengths outweigh areas for improvement  Unsatisfactory – Important areas for improvement outweigh strengths

 A college nominee was appointed in the same way a nominee was appointed under the old framework. Assistant principal Sian Pinner was appointed.

 Prior to the inspection week the college sent SARs and the Institutional Review to the inspection team. From these reports the inspection team identified lines of enquiry that they would follow during the week. These lines of enquiry were given to the college at the start of the week. These could be areas that the college was flagging up as excellent practice or actions that had been identified.

 Subject Area Reports must be a high standard and be evaluative and accurate. They must reflect strengths and weaknesses and have robust SMART actions in place to indicate development and address weaknesses. A clear evidence trail must be in place to support the reports. Data analysis must be well presented and accurate indicating knowledge and understanding of the ‘Bench Marking Tool’.  Tell your story and have the evidence trail in place.

 The inspection team focussed on the learner; after every observation tutors left the room ten minutes prior to the end of the session to allow the inspector to talk to the group. Feedback from learners post inspection was very good they found the experience very positive and stated that they had enjoyed the process. Inspectors were active in randomly talking learners; they were approached in the refectory and in the corridors, whenever an opportunity arose.

 You no longer have sector specialists observing sessions. This concept seemed hard to grasp before the inspection. On reflection after the observations, staff and learners were happy with this, they felt that it was a positive experience. Staff could show off their teaching skills, the learners could demonstrate how much they had learnt by explaining concepts to none specialists.

 Overall Outcomes:  Overall judgement regarding the college – Good  Prospects for improvement – Adequate  Overall the college is good with good standards being achieved by learners  Prospects for improvement are regarded as adequate as the college cannot demonstrate sufficiently well that it plans for improvement.

 KQ1 – How good are outcomes? - Good  Standards achieved – Good  Learner’s wellbeing – Good Standards achieved by learners are good and in some cases excellent – Overall success rate is now 81% this is 11% above the NC for 2007/2008

 KQ2 – How good is provision – Adequate  Learning experiences – Adequate  Teaching and assessment – Adequate  Care support and guidance – Adequate  Learning environment – Good 80 observations were undertaken over 2.5 days. 61% of observations were good 39% were adequate or unsatisfactory. 3% were unsatisfactory this unfortunately lead to an overall adequate.

 KQ3 – How good are leadership and management? – Good  Leadership – Good  Partnership working - Good  Quality improvement – Adequate  Resource management – Good Resources are well managed and the college provides good value for money

 What next for Coleg Powys? As a whole college we need to improve the consistency and quality in every aspect of what we do and in particular :  The quality of teaching and the learning experience and particularly embedding the cross cutting themes to broaden the learners experience.  The quality of the SARs and quality development planning  The quality of course reviews and the quality development planning  The robustness of assessed observations  That staff at all levels accept their leadership responsibilities

 What is sector leading practice?

 Thank you 