Readers will remember the press release issued by Cowes Enterprise College last week in relation to Ofsted’s interim report.
The full report has been released today on the Ofsted Website and highlights other areas where improvement has been found along with details of where changes are still needed.
The full report is embedded below for your convenience, but we’ve picked out a few highlights.
Achievement and learning
- During the inspection on 26/27 June the inspector found that students’ achievement is improving, with academic targets more challenging than before.
- The college’s information on students’ progress indicates that current Year 11 and sixth form students are on track to attain higher standards this summer than was the case last year.
- Despite these improvements, some groups of students are not yet making the progress that they should. For example, the progress made by boys, middle attaining students, disabled students and those with special educational needs remains too low.
- The quality of teaching is improving. The percentage of lessons in which teaching is inadequate has declined, although not been fully eradicated.
- Despite these improvements, teaching is not yet consistently good enough to ensure that students are making enough progress to catch up the ground lost during their earlier years at the college.
- Good relationships between teachers and students and the impact of this on students’ good behaviour was a positive feature of the large majority of the lessons observed.
- In the less successful lessons teachers are not matching work closely enough to the learning needs of all students, particularly the more able. Some teachers still talk for too long, do too much work for students and do not provide activities that engage and interest them fully.
- Staff now have a better understanding of the specific learning needs of disabled students and those with special educational needs in their class through information provided to them. The methods used to support the learning of these students have improved; however, inconsistencies in practice remain.
Behaviour and attendance
- Students behave well in the large majority of lessons. Students and staff report that behaviour is improving, particularly so since the arrival of the new interim executive principal. However, students also reported that their lessons were occasionally disrupted by a few students misbehaving and inspectors observed some poor behaviour in a very small minority of lessons
- Students reported that incidents of bullying were rare but that when they did occur staff dealt with these incidents well.
- Levels of attendance have declined slightly since the inspection in November and are now just below the national average.
Council support
- The local authority has very limited capacity to provide support to the college regarding the implementation of its improvement plan; however, they have part funded support from an external school improvement service.
http://onthewight.com/2013/07/11/cowes-enterprise-college-christine-hardman-praised-ofsted/
