An apprenticeship provider in Kent has accused Ofsted inspectors of creating a “state of fear” for its staff following an ‘inadequate’ result.
Art Providers Ltd, which mostly delivers adult care apprenticeships nationally, was hit with Ofsted’s lowest grade in a critical inspection report this morning.
But leaders at the independent training provider said they did not agree with the rating and alleged poor conduct from inspectors, including evidence being ignored.
A team of inspectors examined Art Providers’ apprenticeship delivery between July 15 and 18, when it had 154 apprentices on its books.
The watchdog claimed that “too few apprentices achieve their apprenticeship in the time expected”, adding that the “small minority” who do complete are “well prepared for their final assessments”.
A spokesperson for Art Providers told FE Week that the report did not reflect around 20 apprentices who are currently registered for their end-point assessment.
“We’re not claiming to be perfect but we’ve not had a single learner fail. We’ve had distinctions, people graduated with distinction merit so I don’t know where the inadequacy is coming from,” they said.
The ITP has been providing apprenticeships since January 2023 and has no published qualification achievement rate yet.
Ofsted said it found “consistently poor” attendance from apprentices and condemned leaders’ lack of planning of on- and off-the-job training.
The Art Providers spokesperson claimed that inspectors based their judgment on only seeing the one-to-one teaching delivered during inspection week and did not consider the monthly group teaching sessions.
The Ofsted report also noted leaders’ failures to mitigate “fundamental weaknesses” in its provision, poor oversight and poor sequence training.
Inspectors said: “[Leaders’] lack of a clear and accurate understanding of the challenges facing apprentices has significantly limited their ability to make improvements. As a result, too many apprentices fall behind or disengage from learning without getting the help they need.”
The ITP challenged Ofsted’s rating when they found out they had been awarded ‘inadequate’ in four out of the five areas.
Leaders told FE Week that they submitted “hundreds” of pages of evidence for Ofsted after they complained.
“Out of almost over 100 pages of evidence provided, the person they brought in to look at this matter agreed that they should just look at a single page, which simply means they didn’t look into the evidence we supplied,” they said.
They also raised conduct complaints about one of the inspectors “practically creating a state of fear in the staff”.
“When the inspectors were here, we actually complained against one of the inspectors, who was basically shutting people down when the inspection was going on,” they added.
Private providers judged ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted are usually sanctioned by the Department for Education, which can include contract termination.
The ITP said they had not spoken with DfE yet, but was positive the department would hear their case to retain their apprenticeship contract after the local DfE representative had been “quite sympathetic”.
Ofsted is currently overhauling its inspection process after a coroner ruled that an Ofsted inspection contributed to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry and amid wider concerns about the reliability of inspection judgments.
New-style report cards are due to be rolled out from November 10, with headline overall grades for FE providers removed in favour of sub-judgments in up to 16 areas using a colour-coded five-point scale.
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