Two ‘inadequate’ training providers in Essex are making “reasonable progress” in improving their grades, but still have a long way to go in pulling themselves away from Ofsted’s lowest possible rating.

In what was a quiet week for FE inspections, Epping Forest College and Essex County Council each had their third monitoring visit reports published following their grade fours, which were first revealed in January and February this year respectively.

There was only one full inspection, but it did not make for easy reading as Chesterfield-based NLT Training fell from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’, which FE Week reported on Tuesday.

Epping, which teaches nearly 3,000 learners, was lauded for making “significant progress” in ensuring that all safeguarding arrangements for all groups of learners are “effective”.

However, “insufficient progress” is being made in “swiftly” improving the quality of teaching, learning and assessment.

“Too often, teachers do not take into account the starting points of their learners to ensure that they set them demanding tasks and activities that challenge them to excel,” inspectors said.

“In lessons, too many learners are left to become bored when they have completed tasks that they have found too easy.”

Some teachers’ presentations, resources and materials contain “spelling, punctuation and grammar errors”, Ofsted added.

Insufficient progress is also being made in ensuring that learners’ attendance, punctuality and behaviour are “good”.

It was better news for the college’s work in strengthening the “observation” of teachers’ practice to “drive improvements in teaching, learning and assessment”, and ensuring that the progress of learners and apprentices is monitored “rigorously” and leaders “understand accurately” the strengths and weaknesses of the provision.

Epping was also found to be making “reasonable progress” to ensure that leaders work “effectively” with the local enterprise partnership, employers and community organisations to “ensure that the range and content of all provision is aligned to local and regional priorities”.

Over at Essex County Council, leaders was praised for “rapidly improving” the quality of teaching, learning and assessment, and ensuring that the observation of tutors’ practice is “fit for purpose and secures improvements”.

Leaders’ self-assessment is now “robust and appropriately self-critical” and “drives effective action planning that secures sustainable improvement” leaders now provide county councillors with “accurate information on performance so that county councillors challenge them effectively”.

“Significant progress” was found to be made in safeguarding arrangements.

“Leaders have established a regional safeguarding peer group comprising local authority community learning and skills providers to peer-assess safeguarding arrangements and share good practice,” Ofsted explained.

“All staff have conducted safeguarding and ‘Prevent’ duty training since the inspection of December 2016. Nearly all staff have also undertaken further training on the promotion of online safety.”

NLT Training, an independent training provider with around 250 learners, received the lowest possible grade across the board from Ofsted.

It is now trying to get taken over by WEBS Training Ltd, a Nottingham-based furniture training provider rated ‘good’ in April this year to save the business.

Sarah Temperton, NLT’s chief, said she was “extremely disappointed” at the Ofsted verdict, and that she would be “challenging them at a number of levels”.

Declining achievement rates at NLT, which specialises in engineering and manufacturing apprenticeships and study programmes, were among the issues dragging it down in the report.

“A large proportion of apprentices have not completed their apprenticeship by the planned end dates, many of which were unrealistic,” it said.

Achievement rates among study programme learners were deemed to be “very low”, as was the rate at which these learners “successfully progress to further education, training or employment”.

Elsewhere there was one provider – Baltic Training Services Ltd in Durham – which kept its ‘good’ rating in a short inspection.

 

GFE Colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Epping Forest College	14/11/2017	14/12/2017	M	M

 

Adult and Community Learning	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Essex County Council	31/10/2017	11/12/2017	M	M
NLT Training Services Ltd	31/10/2017	12/12/2017	4	2

 

Short inspections (remains grade 2)	Inspected	Published
Baltic Training Services Limited	08/11/2017	14/12/2017

 

 

The Institute of Apprenticeships will make its processes and policies “faster and better” in 2018, under the new regime of former military man Sir Gerry Berragan.

It launched its assault on government red tape in a statement on Monday, just two weeks after the former army adjutant general took over as chief executive.

Among the improvements the institute promises are “faster standards development” and “revised funding calculations” – two bones of contention for the employer groups developing standards and the providers wanting to deliver them.

“We’ve always recognised some of the systems, policies and processes we inherited needed improving,” it said.

“Institute staff have been listening, consulting and planning improvements to make the process faster and better.”

The institute is “working hard to shorten the process” of developing standards.

From the New Year, it said, “trailblazer groups will be able to access intensive two-day workshops to complete the writing of standards or assessment plans from start to finish” which will save “about a third of the usual time”.

It also plans work with the groups so that “standards and EPA plans can be submitted and approved in parallel, saving about six weeks from the end-to-end process”.

Furthermore, it committed to “developing a quicker and more transparent system for making funding band recommendations” aligned to the new approvals process, “to cut out unnecessary stages and make sure new apprenticeships are ready as quickly as possible”.

FE Week has previously reported on the frustration felt by various trailblazer groups at the delays to getting standards approved for delivery.

Keith Donnelly, who chairs the group working on the level two carpentry and joinery standard, which is still in development, is one such malcontent.

He complained to FE Week in June about the “inordinately long time” it was taking to get the standard ready for delivery – which is now close to four years.

He has now welcomed the IfA’s new measures.

“Anything that can speed up the approval process for standards will be most welcome by employer groups across the country,” he told FE Week.

Other trailblazer groups have discussed the difficulties they have had in agreeing funding bands for their standards, which have added lengthy delays to the approval procedure.

It’s understood these hold-ups are the result of processes established by the IfA itself in April, when it introduced a funding board to secure “value for money”.

Other improvements due to be brought in next year include a new policy to clarify when qualifications can be included in apprenticeships, because current policy had “led to some unpredictable results”.

The IfA’s overriding principle is that “apprenticeship standards assume that the apprenticeship itself is the qualification”, a statement with which Mark Dawe, the AELP’s chief executive, took issue.

“This seems to be a very strange choice of language and change of position from before,” he said. 

“We believe that successful apprentices deserve more than assumptions, namely a proper qualification which benefits them in the employment market.”

Sir Gerry’s appointment as IfA boss was announced in November, after a six-month long recruitment process.

He served as a career soldier for 37 years and was initially appointed as an IfA board member in January.

He took over on November 27, replacing former interim chief executive Peter Lauener, who had been about to retire, but who has instead taken up a temporary position in charge of the Student Loans Company.