Achieving OFSTED ‘Outstanding’ – The School of Art & Design, West Suffolk College

We provide an outstanding education to every one of our students. Our ethos is to put our learners’ success at the heart of everything we do. That means we do everything we can to help our students succeed and be the best they can be.

We have an impressive range of courses, high quality facilities, inspiring tutors and incredible opportunities to open up a career or succeed in higher education. Our award-winning annual in-house MARS Award (Maths, Art, Religion, Science) is delivered to all levels and courses over December and January – and this covers many OFSTED targeted areas brilliantly.

We believe in engaging with our students as young adults in a supportive and encouraging environment and we aim to give the best opportunity to develop, grow and become passionately involved in their own education.

In our previous OFSTED inspection, the college received a ‘Good’ overall grading and since then we developed significant focused strategies aimed at achieving an ‘Outstanding’ overall grade. To work towards this, we have been nurturing a positive, professional and unified team amongst our educators. The college had carefully implemented professional development for staff, visual improvements to the site, quality processes and readiness plans for this inspection.

We optimise the power of living in a digital age so all documents and evidence for everything (staff and courses) are on one unified, uniformly designed location in Google Drive. Everything is current and available, and all students present their work, evaluations and feedback on Google Slides. Therefore, all work is instantly available for staff, managers and inspectors so it makes it easier for assessments and feedback to be delivered, allowing for more efficiency in our processes.

There is a strong culture of teaching, demonstration, pace and recording of learning at West Suffolk College. We have driven and managed classes which feed the message of the individual student being the next generation of business and creative industry professionals. Our students know they are held to a culture of high standards to help prepare them for the next stage of their educational and future careers.

The West Suffolk College School of Art & Design has 500 students studying UAL Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 and Foundation courses across a wide range of specialist pathways. We have been delivering UAL qualifications and worked closely with UAL in productive capacities for many years. Their understanding of the transformative nature of creative education and the critical importance of the UK creative industries aligns with our core missions.

The School of Art and Design was ‘deep dived’ into along with other selected college curriculum areas, including UAL Games and Performing Arts. The whole of Art and Design was inspected, with a focus on Level 3 Extended Diploma: Creative Practice (year 2) Fashion & Textiles pathway. This was an intense process.

The final feedback from our designated Inspector on what she had seen in Art & Design was nothing short of fantastic and very touching. There were no points of weakness in her analysis and said the standards and ambitions were ‘remarkable’. She said all the evidence clearly showed that of a transformative education from a dedicated team.

Every course/pathway has one designated external stakeholder/employer link. This is an individual or company which advises on curriculum, sets live assignments, feeds back in some assessments, and are invited to events and speaks to groups on the expectations of industry. UAL come in during October for 3 days to present Higher Education opportunities to all students: this was seen as an outstanding practice.

Students with special educational needs and disabilities have focused support and targets are rigorously set and followed up alongside an education, health and care plan (EHCP). We continually examine this support and the outcomes of our students and use effective target setting to measure progress and ensure our students are progressing well. SEND students have 1-1 support and generally do exceptionally well – finding the qualification, teaching, learning, environment, peer group and opportunities liberating - thriving and able to focus they talents at a subject they connect with.

More broadly, we encourage a culture of engagement through live assignments, competitions, community links and always celebrate our students’ successes loudly. We are fortunate in that we have our own building and can display work however we wish and change spaces as we see fit. Success is visibly honoured with student work and messages on stairs and corridors. Our college environment is vibrant, allowing students to see the link between creating work and having it actualised into a final product that ends up on display, something they can aspire towards in their futures. We believe any recognition of hard work is a great thing.

The entire point of our existence is to enable transformative change and opportunities for all. We are an open art school – no alignments to class, family funding capacity, religion, individual identities, school references – which is something we pride ourselves on.

In the School of Art and Design we do not cherry-pick students or create barriers to joining courses. We offer places as students apply for courses – first come, first served - not choose the 20 with the best grades and portfolios in May from a list!  Students do not need to have done GCSE Art previously and we are pragmatic regarding maths and English grades. Anybody can study here and build a rewarding future for themselves with hard work, and open mind and our support.