Ofsted visit next March

The WEA in England will be inspected by Ofsted in the week beginning the 10th March 2008. This inspection will cover courses running next term. The lead inspector will be Richard Moore who has many years experience of inspecting adult and community learning. He was involved in producing an Adult Learning Inspectorate guide to good practice in non-accredited provision in 2005 which you can see here: Download tm43_nonaccreditedLearningSupplement.pdf

Each WEA region has an inspection nominee to help regional colleagues - staff, tutors and volunteers - to plan and coordinate the visit.

To find out more about inspection from the Ofsted Inspection toolkit  click here. The Ofsted's Good Practice database is worth a close look. It's on Quality Improvement Agency's 'Excellence Gateway (don't ask me why) click here to see it.

Finally, the WEA Trustees approved our consolidated Self Assessment Report for 2006-07 at their meeting this week along with our Improvement Plans. The grade judgements are still as before validation but the leadership and management judgements were slightly amended:

 

Strengths:

· Strong management of change in a very large, diverse and complex organisation (LM1)

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

· Strong advocacy and delivery of responsive curriculum for adults across

England

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)

You can read the report to Trustees on the Self Assessment process and recommendations here: Download report_for_trustees_on_final_csar.doc