Colleges must work more effectively with local employers to help
unlock the unrealised potential of young people taking level 2
study programmes, HM Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman will say in a
speech this afternoon.
Addressing delegates at the Association of Colleges (AoC) annual
conference in Birmingham, she will say that many of the 170,000
young people doing level 2 study programmes are facing narrow
options and limited flexibility.
Ms Spielman’s comments come as Ofsted publishes a major report on
the curriculum available to students taking level 2 study
programmes at further education colleges. Often these young people
do not have five good GCSEs and there are gaps in their
understanding of English and maths.
The report says that these young people’s life-long employability
depends on the ability of teachers to redirect their education
into a course that stimulates and motivates them, and which
offers the prospect of further study, training or work. However,
it finds that for too long they have been seen by policy makers
as “other people’s children” and, as a result, their needs have
not always been met.
In her speech to the AoC, HM Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman will
say the report found that the colleges that were thinking most
deeply about curriculum did three important things:
- collaborate with local employers to design and deliver
curricula that set up leaders for good local jobs
- recognise the importance of personal, social and
employability skills
- evaluate the benefits of their study programmes by properly
tracking destinations and feed that back into curriculum design.
Today’s report also outlines concern about the number of courses
on offer that do not lead to good local jobs. Ofsted found that
many colleges collected little data about learners’ destinations.
But those colleges that did were able to give Ofsted a view about
which courses had the best and worst employment
prospects.
Art and media courses were seen by students as having the least
chance of leading to a job, but at least three colleges surveyed
by Ofsted reported these courses as having the most applicants.
Ms Spielman will say in her speech:
"Arts and media does stand out as the area where there is
greatest mismatch between the numbers of students taking the
courses and their future employment in the industry. There is a
point up to which courses that engage learners have value but
ultimately there have to be viable prospects at the end.
"Yet even with the poor prospects, course adverts often listed
potential jobs in the arts which are, in reality, unlikely to be
available to the vast majority of learners but underplay the
value of other skills these courses develop.
“These colleges risk giving false hope to students. It raises the
question: are they putting the financial imperative of headcount
in the classroom ahead of the best interests of the young people
taking up their courses. If so, this isn’t acceptable."
Ofsted has already announced that there will be a stronger
emphasis on the curriculum in the new Education Inspection
Framework, which will take effect in September 2019. There will
also be a new judgement for ‘quality of education’. This will
replace the current ‘outcomes for pupils’ and ‘teaching, learning
and assessment’ judgements with a broader, single judgement. The
Chief Inspector will use her speech to the Association of
Colleges to outline how these plans will relate to the further
education and skills sector.
Ms Spielman will continue:
“Inspectors will still judge the progress that learners are
making from their starting points, but will evaluate this in
terms of how they have developed new knowledge, skills and
behaviours rather than the amount of progress they have made
towards achieving a component of a qualification.
“In the new framework inspectors will want to make sure that
learners are developing a deep understanding of the subject and
that this is embedded in their long term memory. Inspectors will
want to see that learners are able to recall information and have
the skills to complete tasks routinely, rather than simply for a
one-off assessment or test.
“We want to send a clear message that teaching to the test to
achieve high achievement rates is not good practice, and there is
no need to continually assess learners to predict likely
achievement grades. That time is far better spent making sure
learners accumulate all the required knowledge, skills and
behaviours.”
As a result, today’s report recommends that colleges
should:
- engage actively with employers, who should co-design and
implement aspects of the curriculum and assess learners
- review their current minimum requirements for level 2 and
level 3 study programmes to make sure that they are appropriate
- ensure that teachers are up to date with the practices and
jobs available in their industry
- arrange work experience so that they are relevant to
learners’ programmes of study
- give clearer feedback to learners on their progress
- not focus too much on qualification outcomes
- evaluate whether level 2 learners improve their progression
into careers by progressing to a level 3 study programme.
Ofsted also recommends that the Department for Education should
provide guidance to colleges about the information they should
publish on their websites about student destinations, and
evaluate the impact of the policy requiring students to
re-sit their English and mathematics GCSE.
