OFSTED Insights

We had a 2 day inspection and the lead inspector asked to meet with me for one hour on the second day.

Work experience

This was her initial focus, she wanted evidence of placements i.e. veryan. She asked to see numbers placed and those without a placement from last year's Year 10, she then wanted to know the proportion that had additional needs and SEN and how they are supported to find a placement. She wanted to know what provision was available for those who stayed in school. Last year I only had 10 in school and was able to talk about their programme.

She also wanted evidence for alternative work-related placements including paperwork and evidence of checks. She was very interested in alternative curriculums and links with local employers.

Careers advice and guidance

She asked me about provision in school and my background. She was very interested in careers interviews, priorities, when and how this take place. She asked about our college application process and how I monitor and manage this. She wanted to know how I prioritise support ie PP, SEN etc and what extra I provide for these students.

She also asked about fair access for apprenticeship providers/employers and apprenticeship take up and application support.

Her main focus with careers guidance/provision was asking students and she interviewed 4 groups of year 11s to ask about their experience of careers guidance and transition support. She asked a broad range of students too from SEN, pp, poor attenders to very able from years 8-11. This was an entirely careers focussed session as well.

Employers

She asked for examples of careers across the curriculum in key areas across the school. She particularly focussed on English, food tech and arts. She asked me how students from year 8 up interact with employers and what events we hold each term. I discussed Year 7-11 using my annual plan. The focus here was on quality interactions rather than volume of employers, she wanted to know how we evaluate the usefulness of the sessions.

Links with FE/HE

She wanted to know about our links with local colleges, taster days and links with HE. Discussed local and national University visit and talks in school ie UCAS assembly, Cambridge talks, Falmouth University mentoring. Also discussed our data sharing agreement and the impact this has had.

Careers programme

She had read all of our published policies on line.

Destinations

She asked to see all of our latest data from last year and projected intended destinations for this year. She asked for a breakdown of PP/SEN which our data manager arranged.

Other key points were, alumni- do we use them and for what purpose? I mentioned that we had used future first pre covid and the alumni who have been coming into school, although we have only had a few this year with a University alumni assembly planned for summer term.

At the end of the session she asked me if there was anything I would like to share, which gave me the opportunity to share anything that hadn't been covered.

I made a file of all key documents, evaluations of events and also brought my laptop to access veryan.

The lead inspector was very well informed and definitely asked robust questions.

I think that is everything, it went very quickly!