What Ofsted is saying about Adult Education

Last March the Adult Learning Inspectorate became part of Ofsted. It will be Ofsted that undertakes the next Inspection of WEA provision (due any time from March 2008 onward).

Ofsted will examine the work of the WEA as part of Adult and Community Learning (ACL). The Chief Inspector's Annual Report for2006-07 was published in October and only devoted seven paragraphs to ACL. You can see them here: Download CIAR0607ACL.doc

The next Inspection of the WEA will look closely at our own assessment of our strengths and areas for improvement. These are still being finalised and next Monday we will have these tested by an external panel before recommending them to Trustees for publication.  At the moment, our judgements are:

 

Strengths:

· Long-standing and effective partnerships that provide learning opportunities for adults from marginalised and disadvantaged communities (LM1)

· Good quality teaching and learning underpinned by an effective and developing Quality Improvement Framework (LM2)

· Strong advocacy and continuing delivery of adult provision across

England

through effective leadership at all levels including significant voluntary involvement (LM3)

 

Areas for improvement:

· Inadequate monitoring of learner progression (LM4)

· Accredited success rates below sector average in some Curriculum Management Areas (LM5)

· Inadequate reporting arrangements to support consistent implementation of tutor and staff qualifications, Continuing Professional Development and Equality & Diversity strategies (LM6)

 

I will confirm these and other key points of our self-assessment after that but I thought you might want to see how the Inspectorate sees provision similar to ours and to compare  our provisional assessment to those points.

Comments

[Judith Hodgkinson]

If I am not too late to get back to Peter Templeton and his WEA working party, I would be interested. Chesterfield, London and Bristol are all a long way when one is in the middle of teaching. Communication by email is rather less time consuming. One of the areas I am particularly interested in is the humanities curriculum and in particular co-ordinating the Heritage Houses course which is offered in Northamptonshire, but also elsewhere. Is there any room for this within your working party?