A college group has been left shocked after being downgraded to ‘requires improvement’ just a year after it was judged as ‘good’ by Ofsted.

The TEC Partnership – which teaches over 6,500 students across several campuses in the Yorkshire and Humber region and Lincolnshire – was inspected in May 2022 and handed a grade two in a report published two months later.

Ofsted’s inspection handbook states that FE providers judged ‘good’ will “normally be inspected within five years of the publication of their previous inspection report”.

But the TEC Partnership received another call from the inspectorate in September 2023, during the busy student induction and enrolment period. Inspectors then conducted a three-day inspection between September 26 and 29, and published an overall grade three verdict this week.

A spokesperson for the TEC Partnership told FE Week the college group was “very surprised” by the timescale and resulting judgment, adding that there is an “emotional toll” attached to each inspection.

“We were repeatedly told there had been no trigger and it was within the usual inspection cycle as we were due an enhanced inspection,” a spokesperson said.

“We are very mindful of the emotional and organisational toll that an inspection takes on staff; particularly in September when we were in the throes of student induction and enrolment, and so soon after the previous inspection.”

Ofsted launched “enhanced” inspections of colleges in September 2022, which involves judging each college’s contribution to meeting “skills needs”. It has a commitment to inspect all colleges between September 2022 and 2025 using the “enhanced” inspection regime.

Ofsted reiterated this pledge when FE Week asked why the watchdog chose to reinspect the TEC Partnership within 15 months of its last ‘good’ inspection. A spokesperson added: “We use a broad range of information to assess risk and performance when selecting providers for inspection.”

The grade three report for TEC Partnership judged the college group as ‘good’ in every theme barring leadership and management, which was deemed ‘requires improvement’ and led to the same rating being applied overall.

Ofsted’s latest report said leaders have “recently developed a renewed vision and carried out a restructure of the organisation with the aim of developing a standardised and efficient partnership approach to their operation”, which includes approaches to “quality assurance, safeguarding and business support functions”.

However, the watchdog warned “too many” of the actions taken to achieve this “have not been implemented rapidly or effectively enough”. Staff have been left “uncertain about the reasons for the changes or what will happen next, and many express dissatisfaction with the approach that leaders are taking,” the report said. 

Inspectors noted that across all TEC Partnership campuses, teaching and support staff work “hard to ensure that learners and apprentices receive a good quality of education”.

However, “too many” staff have “heavy schedules”, are “having to cover teaching vacancies” and have “high workloads”.

On top of this, while Ofsted found safeguarding to be “effective” it warned there are “inconsistencies” in this area across the college group’s different sites.

A TEC Partnership spokesperson said: “The report acknowledges that plans are in place and being delivered successfully and this seems at odds with the timeframe for the inspection and the grade profile for leadership and management.”

The spokesperson added that staff are “absolutely right” to raise issues around increasing workload due to staff shortages, which is a nationally recognised issue in education.

“Staff shortages due to difficulty in filling vacancies is our number one risk, as we explained to Ofsted, and we are doing all we can to address this,” they added.

“Since the inspection, improvements have been made to the salary scales for teaching roles in November and further improvements are being recommended to the board next week. All of this was planned before the group was re-inspected, as we were already very well aware of the challenges the sector faces.”

The spokesperson said the TEC Partnership has been through a period of “unprecedented but necessary change” since the inspection in May 2022, adding that the group is “fully committed to improving and are actively listening to staff concerns through additional engagement processes”.

Manufacturing giant Make UK speaks out about “unjust” cliff-edge inspections after gagging a fatal ‘inadequate’ Ofsted report that turned into a ‘good’ just nine months later…

“They were inept, inexperienced and the wrong team who didn’t know what they were doing”, Make UK chief executive Stephen Phipson says when asked to describe his company’s first of three Ofsted inspections conducted this calendar year.

“If we hadn’t fought them, we would have closed down our training division on the back of what was a wrong judgment. That is unjust. How many other private providers have closed in the past because of a wrong inspection? That has got to be the question.”

Phipson was speaking to FE Week on Wednesday, hours after Ofsted published a glowing grade two report for the manufacturing representative organisation that trains almost 1,000 apprentices.

It came months after a different inspection team visited the provider in January and planned to slam it with an ‘inadequate’ judgment, which would have likely led to the Education and Skills Funding Agency kicking Make UK out of the apprenticeship training market.

The company, formerly called the Engineering Employers’ Federation, quickly lawyered up and was granted a judicial review after spending over half a million pounds on legal fees.

FE Week understands the January inspection team accused Make UK of delaying student progress due to a lack of qualified staff, poorly run courses such as failing to provide relevant materials for welding students, and failing to offer a programme that was tailored to students’ existing abilities.

The most significant allegation made was around safeguarding, namely that there was “misogynistic behaviour”.

“That was unfounded”, Phipson said. He told FE Week Ofsted based its misogyny allegation on an interview with two female apprentices that his team felt was “leading the witness” and extrapolated the view across the whole organisation. He said that the apprentices later denied ever using the word “misogyny” and claimed they said they didn’t even know the meaning of the term.

Ofsted’s grade two report for Make UK was wholly positive. Apprentices feel “safe”, “comfortable” and are “respectful to their peers,” the report said.

It also lauded leaders for providing “high-specification industry standard tools and equipment”, and said tutors are “highly qualified” but recognised there are “challenges with the recruitment and retention of staff”.

Phipson puts the January inspection outcome down to “incompetence” rather than malice.

For example, inspectors focussed on the apprenticeship standards offered by Make UK that have the smallest numbers of learners, rather than the level 3 engineering technician apprenticeship standard which most apprentices work towards.

“The inspectors simply didn’t understand the apprenticeship standards we offer properly,” Phipson said.

“Most of the inspectors had never seen this kind of engineering environment. They were people that inspect schools at the end of the day, and this was a very different thing for them. These are not children, these are adults in a factory setting.

“They were surprised at what welding looks like, you know, surprised at the ways that you have to physically train apprentices, which we’ve always done, and got very good results from.

“It raised a lot of alarm bells. We felt like we needed to give the inspectors a week’s training on what an engineering environment is like before they come in and inspect it. There seems to be a lack of real understanding.”

Make UK “rigorously” challenged the January inspection through Ofsted’s complaints process, which the inspectorate admitted this year was “not working” and is currently being reformed, but “got nothing out of it” which forced the firm to go legal.

The company was granted a judicial review on six grounds and a hearing was scheduled for November. 

Ofsted conducted a mandatory follow-up monitoring visit of Make UK in August and identified positive provision. It then, off its own back, decided to run a full reinspection of the provider in October.

The watchdog then pulled out of the judicial review hearing at the eleventh hour for an undisclosed reason.

In the weeks leading up to the court case, Phipson’s lawyers warned him he had less than a 50 per cent chance of winning, and if he managed to it would set a high precedent for further judicial reviews against the inspectorate.

So why did Ofsted back away?

FE Week understands at least one inspector has been suspended during the proceedings. But Phipson claims Make UK has no idea why Ofsted stood down, but suspects it is a tactic.

“The honest answer to that is we don’t know. Something must have happened. But they left it up until the eleventh hour before they pulled out, which I suspect is always their legal tactic.

“If you look at most private providers, they haven’t got the resources to fight a legal battle against Ofsted, it’s expensive. You have got to employ good lawyers, the first challenge you’ve got is actually getting permission from a court to have a judicial review. So that in itself, I can tell you, was a mountainous task. 

“All the private providers we speak to, they’re doing 100 or 200 apprentices, there’s no way they can employ hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of lawyers. We’re in a different position, because we’re a much bigger organisation, and we weren’t going to have any of that nonsense, because that really was outrageous what they [Ofsted] did. 

“So I think what they do is they try and time you out, they take you right up until the court day almost, to see if you’re in or not.”

Phipson said the reinspection team, which was completely different to the January team, was “professional, experienced and knew what they were doing”.

“We had what you would classify as probably a model Ofsted inspection experience. It was great. This is the way it should have been all the way along.”

Summarising the experience, he said the whole year has been “nerve-racking” for his team.

“It’s been mentally stressful for them. They’ve gone through three Ofsted inspections this year. Can you imagine that?”

He said the overriding issue points to the fact that Ofsted inspections are a “point in time” judgment which is “unfair”.

“You can’t do a spot check on things once every five years. The modern way of doing assessments is continually assessing performance. And Ofsted must modernise and move to a position where there’s a continuous process of checking, inspecting, and not having a negative view on it but a view to try to help people to improve.

“Ofsted should be looking for ways to assist these organisations to improve their delivery of education, not just looking for black spots on a white sheet of paper once every five years.

“For independent providers, if you get a grade four ESFA withdraws your funding. There’s not enough light that’s been shone on the plight of people that invest their own money, only to have it taken away by a three-day visit. There’s got to be a better way of doing it.”

Ofsted declined to comment.

Ofsted has announced plans to train all inspectors on dealing with anxious staff and when to pause visits after the Ruth Perry inquest reached its conclusion.

Chief inspector Amanda Spielman has apologised to the family of headteacher Ruth Perry, after an inquest into her death recorded a verdict of suicide, contributed to by an Ofsted inspection.

From next week, a new complaints hotline will be set up for education settings to report any concerns about their inspection to a senior Ofsted official.

Spielman said Ofsted had already “made changes to the way we work” and “we will do more”, also pledging to “work hard to address” each concern raised by the coroner.

School inspections planned for next week will be delayed by a day as lead school inspectors are called for an urgent briefing. This session will be schools-focussed, with inspections of FE providers going ahead as planned.

But, there will be wider training inspectors across all of Ofsted’s remits.

Spielman said: “The coroner highlighted a number of areas of concern. We will work hard to address each of these as soon as we can, and we are starting that work straight away.

“We have started to develop training for all inspectors on recognising and responding to visible signs of anxiety.

“It’s right that we inspect first and foremost in the interests of children, their parents and carers. But in the light of Mrs Perry’s sad death, it’s also vital that we do all we can to minimise stress and anxiety when we inspect.”

The coroner in the inquest into the death of Perry warned there is a “risk of future deaths if there is only lip service paid to learning from tragedies like this”.

Heidi Connor, who concluded Perry died in January by suicide, contributed to by an Ofsted inspection, plans to issue a “regulation 28” report aimed at preventing future deaths, and urged education secretary Gillian Keegan not to ignore its findings.

She said she hoped her conclusions and report “will be used by the parliamentary inquiry process to review how inspection should work going forward”.

Keegan said the government would “consider further changes to make sure we have an inspection system that supports schools and teachers, and ultimately secure Ruth’s legacy”.

Perry was headteacher at Caversham Primary School in Berkshire when it was rated ‘inadequate’ by inspectors following the visit last autumn.

Under regulation 28, coroners have a “duty to make reports to a person, organisation, local authority or government department or agency where the coroner believes that action should be taken to prevent future deaths”.

Connor said she wanted to “consider the statistics about responses to these reports by government departments”.

But she told Perry’s family “Ruth is not a statistic to me, so please forgive me for mentioning this point briefly”. 

She pointed to a “preventable deaths tracker”, created by an Oxford epidemiologist, which “shows a tendency for some secretaries of state to ignore coroners’ regulation 28 reports”.

“I very much hope that will not be the case here.”

System ‘not weighed against teacher welfare’

The report will highlight seven areas of concern for Ofsted and the Department for Education, including the “impact on leader welfare that this system will continue to have”. 

Connor said “any form of inspection or review will always be inherently stressful”, and that she had “taken that into account in reaching my conclusions”. She added that “nobody would dispute that safeguarding is important”.

But she warned transparency and “ease of message to parents” was “not currently weighed against teacher welfare. The benefits are focused on without taking account of the risks.”

She also noted an “almost complete absence” of Ofsted training or published policies on dealing with signs of distress in leaders during inspections.

Ofsted has been repeatedly criticised for its response to Perry’s death. Last month, Spielman claimed critics had used the tragedy “as a pivot to try and discredit” Ofsted’s work.

Connor said Ofsted’s “approach has been to make public statements in court, setting out their view on whether Ruth’s death was linked to the inspection and how it was carried out”.

“They have publicly described this tragedy as a pivot, used to try and discredit what Ofsted does. This is without any attempt to analyse the evidence more carefully. There is a risk of future deaths if there is only lip service paid to learning from tragedies like this.”

Keegan will consider ‘further changes’

Keegan said Ofsted was “fundamental to making sure children are safe and receive the education they deserve”.

“Together we will look closely at the coroner’s recommendations to consider further changes to make sure we have an inspection system that supports schools and teachers, and ultimately secure Ruth’s legacy.”

She added that “my heart goes out to Ruth’s family, friends and the school community. Her death was a tragedy that not only shocked the local community but also the wider sector and beyond.”

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