Lakes College has been told it needs to improve by the Government. 

While Ofsted inspectors rated the apprenticeships at Lillyhall further education college 'good', they said areas that needed attention were:  

  • Overall effectiveness
  • Effectiveness of leadership and management
  • Quality of teaching, learning and assessment
  • Personal development, behaviour and welfare
  • Outcomes for learners
  • 16 to 19 study programmes and adult learning programmes. 

Lakes College provides further education for around 2,600 students, most aged between 16 and 19. 

Inspectors said:

  • Departmental self-assessments at the college are inconsistent and many are not of a good standard
  • Tackling the poor performance of a minority of teachers requires improvement, with a variable quality in teacher appraisals
  • Too few students have the opportunity for work-placements, and too few get independent careers advice, creating a negative impact on their finding work
  • Too many students make slow progress towards qualifications and too few – particularly in the 16 to 19 bracket – achieve them
  • In a significant minority of subject areas, teacher expectations are too low
  • Tutorials are ineffective for students in class-based programmes
  • Students’ development of maths and English skills on 16 to 19 study programmes requires improvement, with teachers not consistently identifying errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar

Inspectors did say, however, that the college had strong employer partnerships, resulting in a "highly responsive" college curriculum. 

They added: "Learners benefit from good teaching, learning and assessment in practical lessons and apprenticeships.

"Students with high needs and others who need extra help develop independence and achieve challenging goals. 

"Apprentices make good progress and a high number achieve fully employed status on completion of their training." 

Chris Nattress, principal, said most of the problems stem from a relatively recent change in government policy. 

He said: "Two years ago it was decided any student in further education, aged 16 to 19, who has a D or less in maths or English must resit that subject irrespective of whether that's the best thing for them.

"Two years ago we had about 70 students taking these resits, last year we had 500. 

"Just dealing with the situation as a logistical exercise is huge.

"We realised last year we needed to change and have now made those changes, but the fruit of those changes won't be borne out until the end of this year."