With the imminent visit of Ofsted to the WEA in England, I thought it would be worth summarising what is different to what we were used to with the former Adult Learning Inspectorate.
In many respects inspection is the same. It will focus on teaching and learning - especially learning. It will look for evidence from observations, interviews (with students, tutors, staff, partners and volunteers), reports and data. It will be rigorous and ask 'so what?' questions - i.e. 'so what difference does that make for the learner?' The inspectors all have a background in Adult Community Learning (although one interesting area is how that links to Personal & Community Development Learning).
On the whole they won't know the WEA and we'll need to briefly ensure they understand our educational strands and the role of partners, students and volunteers in planning and organising provision they see and in the governance and shaping of the WEA's direction.
Ofsted will grade the WEA in broadly the same way: 1-4 (outstanding to inadequate). It will look for evidence of improvement.
The inspections are smaller. In 2004 we had 45 inspectors for three weeks (675 Inspector days) and the reinspection in 2005 was around 170. This inspection will be for one week with around 80 inspector days looking at Humanities, Arts, Skills for Life, Health, community learning and our community involvement work.
To make judgements with fewer inspectors means the Ofsted team will look for evidence that our own systems are leading to improvements: the Observation of Teaching and Learning, the success rates on accredited courses, the support to learners and the reliability of our own self-assessment process.
Of course, we want to show the WEA as it is and what its distinctive role is locally, regionally and across the country.
It's a very complex inspection process when compared to colleges, local authorities and workplace learning providers. To help with this our longstanding system of nominees in every WEA region is coordinating this process with regional and national colleagues and this network has been vital to improving the work of the WEA over the last four years and is a really supportive and effective peer network - the kind of thing the QIA now advocates as part of 'self-regulation'.
The stakes are high. Ofsted inspection outcomes are a key element in future funding and the 'Framework for Excellence'. I'm confident that our assessment of our own progress is fair. I'm the nominee nationally for the inspection and have been working with the Lead Inspector, Richard Moore, in preparing for the visit. Richard produced a short powerpoint summary of this for the Preparation meeting and I attach that here:
Download powerpoint_presentation.ppt
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