How many hours a year do you spend on producing and writing your self assessment report and quality improvement plan?

With more than 900 learning providers across the country, it’s likely that several thousand staff hours are dedicated to completing a process that – when done well – should enhance all aspects of your provision and demonstrate your organisation’s capacity to improve.

“Your self assessment report should be the culmination of a thorough, self-critical and objective process that helps you identify, build upon and share your strengths with all staff and departments, “ said Nigel Evans, HMI Inspector for Learning and Skills. “ Where you pinpoint areas which are satisfactory or weaker, clear targets for improvement should automatically follow.

“ Unfortunately, despite the huge amount of work that providers put into their quality systems, there are disappointing results in all too many instances.  When inspectors review the self assessment process and subsequent reports, they often find that they lack judgements and internal benchmarks – and fail to highlight the genuine progress made towards improvement targets.

Ofsted inspectors use your SARs to write their pre-inspection briefings and will compare their findings with yours at the end of the inspection.  Getting it right from the outset will give them greater confidence about your organisation’s potential to continue to improve.

To help you in this important process, LSIS and Ofsted organise Prepared for Inspection? events.  These informative workshops will enable you to critically review your approach to self-assessment and introduce you to a range of helpful resources developed by experienced colleagues.

The events, led by Ofsted HMIs and LSIS consultants, will give you the opportunity to develop a whole organisation approach to learner-centred self assessment and explore how to make it a living, dynamic and more streamlined process owned and used throughout your organisation.

You can choose to attend for one or two days and the events cover:

Understanding inspection. This one-day event, delivered by Ofsted HMIs, explains and explores the inspection methodology, provides insights into how inspection is planned and undertaken, and details how Ofsted approaches the key grading themes. Workshops particularly address the preparation process, the limiting grades for E&D and Safeguarding, how to find the starting points for quality improvement and tried-and-tested resources that help improve your self-assessment.

Excellence in real time: the self-knowing provider.  This one-day event, delivered by LSIS associates, explores the implications of the arrangements for inspection and how providers can position themselves to respond most effectively. The workshops have a strong focus on capacity to improve, covering issues such as developing a learner-centred approach to self-assessment and quality improvement.

Feedback from delegates has invariably been positive.  Comments from those attending recent events include: “The resources will help our tutors contribute to the SAR in a way which relates to them more” and “The SAR planning session and the chance to share experiences with other colleagues was particularly useful.”

Full details about the events and how to sign up.