Inspection of Exeter College Date 5-9 March 2012 Lead HMI Lynda Cole

1. Inspection of Exeter College Date 5-9 March 2012 Lead HMI Lynda Cole 21LP Formal feedback slides v1 | 1

2. 21LP Formal feedback slides v1 Grade descriptors • Grade 1 – outstanding • Grade 2 – good • Grade 3 – requires improvement • Grade 4 – inadequate • The findings of the inspection are provisional and subject to moderation. Grades, judgements and wording are subject to change. The contents of this presentation remain confidential until publication of the report | 2

3. 21LP Formal feedback slides v1 Aspect grades | 3

4. 21LP Formal feedback slides v1 Sector subject area grades | 4

5. Key findings – outcomes grade 1 • Outcomes for learners are outstanding. Since the last inspection, overall success rates and long courses have increased annually and are above national rates, with a steady and sustained trend of improvement. In 2010/11, a high proportion of students completed their courses and gained their qualifications. • In GCE AS and A-level subjects the proportion of high grades is well above average. While AS success rates are not at the same high level as those for the A level provision, nevertheless they are consistently above the national rate for sixth form colleges. Overall success rates are above the national rates in all but one subject area. • Retention and success rates have increased annually for learners aged 14 – 16 and are very high; the overall number of those in this age group within the Exeter area who are not in employment, education or training has substantially reduced. • Outcomes for learners in work-based learning are good overall. In Train to Gain provision, a high proportion of learners complete. However, advanced apprentices aged 16 -18, do not complete in a timely manner, although the college’s current data indicates this is significantly improving. Overall success rates in all but one of the subject areas in which apprenticeships are offered are either well above or around the national rate. | 5

6. Key findings - outcomes • Most learners make very good progress in relation to their prior attainment and particularly so on the A-level programmes and the BTEC national awards. They produce work to a high standard. Across the college’s programmes, students’ attendance is good and improving, as is their punctuality. Students are strongly aware of the importance of being punctual for their learning sessions and act accordingly. • The college has few significant differences in the performance of different groups. The gender gap narrowed considerably for learners aged 16 – 18 in 2010/11. In work-based learning, success rates are broadly similar by gender and ethnic group. Overall, students with a declared learning difficulty and/or disability do not achieve quite as well as other students; however for these students aged 19 or over the gap significantly narrowed in 2010/11 to the same rate for students aged 16-18. • The college’s excellent links with industry and very good range of realistic working environments for vocational programmes and work-based learning enable students to develop excellent personal, social and employability skills. In community education classes, learners develop very good personal, social, and on some courses, specific vocationally related skills. Progression to higher level qualifications is good with almost a fifth of level 3 students progressing onto higher education in 2010/11. | 6

7. Key findings – teaching, learning and assessment grade 1 • Teaching learning and assessment are outstanding. Inspectors agreed with the college that teaching is highly effective and meets students’ needs extremely well. A high proportion of teaching and learning is good or better and often it is outstanding. In these good and better lessons teachers set high expectations for their students often using varied and stimulating teaching strategies to create highly effective ways that help students remember what they have learnt. • Teaching in the very best lessons is characterised by swift pace, and engaging and innovative strategies to impart knowledge and information. Teachers with a fluent grasp of teaching techniques check learning deftly and use a good range of questions to deepen students understanding. In many vocational subject teachers plan carefully to ensure students apply their learning to reach very high standards. • Teachers combine their excellent subject knowledge with extensive professional expertise to imbue lessons with enthusiasm energy and pace and consequently students learn quickly. The trust and cooperation carefully nurtured by staff helps build students’ confidence. As a result students are eager to learn, develop good skills in self-reflection and gain strong self-belief to work very well on their own. • The promotion of equality and diversity within lessons varies across curriculum areas. Although some teachers are confident and skilfully manage debate about issues not all teachers are yet sufficiently confident to take full advantage of opportunities to promote discussion on these themes. | 7

8. Key findings – teaching, learning and assessment • The college’s well-equipped and particularly well-organised learning centres provide excellent facilities in which students learn. Staff commitment to their students is often exemplary with many staff supporting their students via email outside usual working hours. Consequently students achieve very well and make good progress in and outside their lessons. • Students consider the college’s virtual learning environment essential in helping them make good progress. Although many teachers have developed excellent digital learning resources not all teachers are adept at using this technology in an interactive way and rely too much on using it purely to display static information. • Students benefit greatly from an extensive and varied range of support outside lessons. Staff with specialist designated roles provide highly effective support and a range of intervention strategies. Effective joint work with external agencies has had tangible measurable impact on the most vulnerable students. • Very close and careful monitoring, and targeted appropriate financial help, keeps students from leaving courses early and/or completing their courses. Teachers also monitor students’ progress carefully although the targets they set for development following reviews of progress, although they do not always ensure progress is monitored sharply and specifically enough. A few teachers do not challenge and push the most able students to achieve even higher grades they themselves think they are capable of achieving. | 8

9. Key findings – leadership and management • Leadership and management are outstanding. The passion of leaders and managers at all levels for securing the best experience and outcomes for students is tangible and underpins a strong commitment to continuous improvement which avoids prescription and encourages innovation. Governors challenge the senior leadership team by monitoring college performance with a rigorous eye for detail and demanding that targets are ambitious but achievable. • Close monitoring of performance by managers, facilitated by ready access to high quality data reports, and incisive intervention make a real impact in raising standards. High expectations of staff and students are embedded in the college’s culture. Staff morale is high and the college enjoys a pool of high calibre staff able to develop and advance internally. The college has become adept at identifying good practices in other colleges and adapting them to fit the Exeter way. • The college’s focus on improving teaching and learning has become relentless with the current priority being to raise the standard of the remaining few satisfactory lessons to good. The college has compelling evidence from a range of very effective improvement strategies of individual teachers becoming more effective through developmental support. Staff development is extensive and strongly focused on improving teaching & learning. | 9

10. Key findings – leadership and management • Faculty managers and their teams ensure the closest match between the curriculum, the career and higher education aspirations of students and the needs of employers. They keep their curriculum under constant review and are very alert to opportunities to secure greater relevance and increased success through fine tuning or more significant changes. In some curriculum areas functional skills provision is not sufficiently well organised and contextualised. • At college level, the self-assessment process results in a comprehensive, well-evidenced and reliable report. Inspectors agreed with the large majority of self-assessment grades. However, the evaluative skills evident in self-assessment reports at course, area and faculty levels are less well developed. Nevertheless, managers at all levels know their provision and staff well and their ability to secure improvements is demonstrated regularly. Managers analyse course performance by exploring factors which explain the degree of correlation between success rates, the quality of teaching and learning and student feedback on their courses. This model can lead them to interesting and useful insights. • The college uses the voice of its students as a critical component in the quality improvement framework. Students are encouraged to have high expectations of their teachers, courses and the college. Extensive representative structures and frequent student surveys alert college managers if standards fall short and intervention is swift and effective. Managers’ responsiveness to the learner voice is exceptional. | 10

11. Key findings – leadership and management • Senior managers keep the performance of each faculty under close review. The college has a mature and reliable system of monitoring the quality of teaching and learning. Lesson observers work hard to apply the right standards and consequently lesson evaluations are appropriately rigorous and consistent. Inspectors found a similar proportion of lessons observed to be good or better. Quality assurance and improvement procedures are applied consistently across all types of provision made by the college. • Equality and diversity are well embedded in the culture and operations of the college. The positive promotion of diversity and the respect agenda routinely permeates the college without ever appearing contrived or tokenistic. Excellent resource support for promoting equality and diversity through tutorials includes weekly alerts via staff email. The college is in the process of shifting greater responsibility for equality and diversity to teachers and inspectors found considerable variability in how systematically and effectively they are being promoted across curriculum areas. • Arrangements to support the safeguarding of learners are extensive and secure. Students feel extremely safe at the college. Any incidents of bullying are dealt with effectively and the college manages health and safety, including risk assessment, very professionally and comprehensively | 11

12. Key findings - subject areas • Health and social care and childhood studies Grade 2 good • Teaching and learning is motivational and supports development of good professional skills. Most teachers confidently use a wide range of activities and resources to engage and motivate students that ensures they are kept interested and purposeful, learning to think critically about their practice and make good progress. However, a few teachers spend too long talking at students and as a consequence students lose interest. • Very well planned and organised sessions ensure students make good progress. Highly effective teaching and learning assists students in improving their literacy and numeracy skills. • Initial assessment is good and used well to plan learning and identify and provide additional support. For those students on work based learning programmes initial assessment is particularly thorough and used well to plan their programme and includes very good involvement of employers • Excellent advice and guidance benefit students in helping them plan effectively for their futures in health and social care and childcare. Equality and diversity is well promoted in the classroom • Assessment is used to support and encourage students but not always used effectively to challenge them to do better. Although work-based learners have good oral feedback from staff, written feedback lacks clear guidance as to how learners can improve their work. • Recommendation • Ensure students receive more tailored and critical feedback on their work to help challenge and extend them to achieve higher | 12

13. Key findings - subject areas • Science Grade 1 outstanding • Teachers plan lessons extremely well using a good range of probing and well-directed questions to check and develop learning. Teachers skilfully use peer assessment that develops their students’ confidence and independence. Highly effective teaching enables students to develop excellent practical skills. • Teachers use a wide range of different ways to ensure students gain a deep and clear understanding about their work with well-written assignments, and tasks, regular homework, supplementary notes and interesting web links which support them to make maximum progress. Teachers often respond promptly to students’ email queries outside normal working hours. As a consequence students develop excellent study and research skills. • Monitoring progress and setting tasks to extend learning is outstanding and as a result students make excellent progress. Subject teachers work in a highly collaborative way with staff from student services, parents and carers, to set clear and specific targets and individual action plans that ensures students achieve their full potential and succeed, often beyond their target grades. • Students develop very good skills in communicating scientific ideas as a result of attending science and maths workshops, exam practice skills in lessons, and from frequent use of extensive and high quality learning materials on the VLE portal. | 13

14. Key findings - subject areas • Engineering (learner responsive provision – aerospace and automotive) Grade 1 outstanding • Teachers use the good motor vehicle and excellent aerospace resources well to support learning, enabling students to link theory and practice particularly effectively. They use their extensive industrial experience and knowledge, combined with very good teaching skills, to engage and motivate students and promote good learning. Teachers challenge the more able students with complex and demanding activities. • Students have exceptionally high expectations of themselves and take pride in their work, and consequently their practical and written work is good and often exemplary. • Students are given excellent timely and detailed feedback on their work which clearly tells them how well they are doing and how they can improve further. Written feedback from teachers challenges students to aspire to higher grades as well as correct errors. • Teaching and learning to develop automotive students’ literacy, numeracy and language skills is restricted and inhibited by both the cramped environment and the way students on all three functional skills, at different levels are taught together. • Recommendation • Improve the teaching of functional skills by reorganising the timetable to better differentiate between subjects and levels and by using more appropriate accommodation. | 14

15. Key findings - subject areas • Engineering (employer responsive provision automotive) Grade 2 good • Work-place assessors use their professional knowledge and experience well to guide and assess students work. Students gain good experience in the wide range of independent garages or body repair businesses across Devon and Cornwall. • Assessors frequently spend time in their apprentices’ workplaces directly observing them perform the various tasks necessary to ensure competence for their qualification. Assessors routinely arrange any additionally visits to observe specific jobs which are of an unusual nature or critical to learners’ qualifications. This is helping apprentices gain their qualifications at a faster rate than in the previous year and many will complete now their qualification earlier than planned. • Apprentices are confident with both routine and complex repair and servicing tasks on a wide range of vehicles. Apprentices have learnt to deal effectively and courteously with their customers, carefully explain what repairs have been carried out and are frequently able to provide sensitive and good advice on any outstanding issues with vehicles. • However, although assessors set targets for apprentices during lengthy reviews in the work place on a range of matters, including how well they are progressing with college work, little is formally recorded. Apprentices sometimes struggle to remember what they have been asked to do from one review meeting to the next. Employers are not provided with sufficient information to see how well their apprentice is progressing with their qualification. • Recommendation • Ensure all assessors routinely provide apprentices and their work-place supervisors with written detailed and clear information in order for all parties, and importantly apprentices, to see what progress they have made and what they have to do to improve their work. | 15

16. Key findings - subject areas • Art and design Grade 2 good • Teaching focuses very effectively on developing skilled, creative students who are self motivated, take responsibility for their own learning and produce practical work of a high standard. Teachers have become increasingly adept at ensuring that teaching meets students’ needs and as a result hardly any students are now leaving their courses before completion. • Teachers plan learning well to ensure that students build their understanding and skills sequentially and make good progress. Many teachers use video clips and projections of visual images very effectively to illustrate teaching points and to enliven lessons. Teachers provide thorough, and detailed written feedback that clearly identifies what students need to do to improve. • Students work at a brisk pace and are enthusiastic and keen and consequently their practical, analytical and personal skills become more refined and sophisticated and they produce creative and interesting solutions to the design problems teachers set. • In a minority of lessons students do not find the activities sufficiently challenging and become disengaged and passive. Teachers do not always set specific clear targets and these are not always systematically recorded. • Many students on vocational courses cannot access the specialist workshop sessions that are available and so limiting the opportunity they have to develop their skills further, especially in the second year when working on their final examination project. • Recommendations • Ensure all students have access to formal and open access specialist workshops so that all students have the same opportunity to develop their practical skills. • Ensure all teachers set and review targets in writing with students that these are clear and detailed enough to help them to improve their work. | 16

17. Key findings - subject areas • Social sciences and humanities Grade 2 good • Teachers plan lessons well with a good variety of activities that keep students interested, enthusiastic and motivated to achieve. Many teachers use ILT adeptly to enliven lessons and allow wider contextual understanding and application skills. • The best teaching is characterised by very good examples of both starter and plenary activities that are effective in ensuring lessons start with vigour or finish with lively summaries thereby encouraging students to work collaboratively and heighten the focus and attention of all students. • In a minority of lessons, the pace of learning is too slow and learners are not encouraged to fully take part in lessons. Instead these lessons are characterised by a narrow range of activities and a dominance of teacher led methods. • The quality of written assessment feedback varies too much. In the best examples, teachers provide students with concise and helpful comments on current performance and relevant links to examination skills which helps students identify ways to further improve their grades. In subjects where this is the case students’ outcomes are above national rates. • More able learners are encouraged to join the Reach Academy and participate in various trips and extension activities to provide challenge and curriculum enrichment. • Progression to higher education is good with learners benefiting from a well- structured tutorial programme and wider college support so that they make successful applications to a wide variety of courses and universities. • Recommendations • Ensure that all teachers give learners the best possible guidance on improvements by enhancing the quality of feedback on homework and assessments across all subjects. | 17

18. Key findings - subject areas • Business administration and law Grade 2 good • Teachers plan lessons well with activities that draw on contemporary business issues and as a consequence students achieve good standards of work, write clearly using contemporary business language and present their work to a professional standard, using charts, tables and graphs well to illustrate key points. • Students attend punctually, finding lessons interesting, enjoyable and hence engage in learning willingly. In the most effective lessons, teachers maintain a brisk pace moving students through a variety of activities which keep them interested and well motivated. • Teaching staff make very effective use of verbal question and answer techniques to check learning and give informative feedback. This helps students be confident, expressive and develop communication skills essential in business. A small number of teachers develop this further into a coaching approach enabling students to discover answers for themselves, which they originally thought outside their ability range. • However, too many teachers do not make sufficient use of different methods to ensure all students are appropriately challenged in their learning, too often relying on a narrow range of techniques. • Students participate in a range of good activities that develop their employability skills such as Young Chamber, projects working with local retailers and initiatives to encourage entrepreneurship. • Students receive good support and staff and students monitor progress routinely but targets and associated actions do not provide students with sufficiently clear guidance on how to improve their work. Although teachers make good use of technology to help students learn not enough teachers use this technology to its full potential neither in the classroom nor in enabling students learning in their own time. • Recommendations • Ensure teaching sessions use a range of methods including ILT to enable all students to participate in activities fully, with each student being challenged at a level appropriate to their ability. • Ensure teachers set specific and clear targets and write subsequent actions that leave students in no doubt what they have to do to improve their work and how to do this. | 18

19. 21LP Formal feedback slides v1 What Exeter College needs to do to improve the provision Overall recommendations • Apply even more rigour to addressing any remaining achievement gaps and provide further support to those teachers not yet confident in exploring all equality and diversity issues within their curriculum. • In those curriculum areas not yet outstanding, ensure that all teachers are challenging students of all abilities to achieve the best possible grade they are capable of achieving. • Develop the skills of curriculum managers in evaluating the quality of provision in a more rigorous, discerning and evidence-based style so that course, area and faculty self-assessment reports become more effective quality improvement tools. | 19

20. www.ofsted.gov.ukThis information has been produced following a pilot unannounced inspection and is not meant for publication, including on the college website, or wider distribution outside the college. 21LP Formal feedback slides v1