Inspection of the learning community
surrounding Kyle Academy
South Ayrshire Council
11 June 2013
Transforming lives through learning
1. Context
Kyle Academy and its Community and Learning Development (CLD) partners within
the area of Kyle Academy were inspected by Education Scotland during April 2013.
During the visit Education Scotland staff talked to children, young people and adults.
We worked closely with staff from schools, CLD managers, CLD providers, partners,
paid staff and volunteers in the area. We wanted to find out how well partners are
improving the life chances of people living in the community through learning,
building stronger more resilient communities and improving the quality of services
and provision. We also looked at how well paid staff and volunteers are developing
their own practices and how well partners, including schools, are working together.
We looked at some particular aspects of recent work which were identified by
partners including:
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Better coordination of support services to enable the most vulnerable to build
resilience against future challenges presented by Welfare Reform.
Active Citizenship.
Literacy, numeracy and information & communications technology (ICT).
Further partnership development through, better co-ordination and promotion of
Continuous Professional Development opportunities available and increase
sharing of good practice with partners.
2. How well are partners improving learning, increasing life chances,
promoting and securing wellbeing?
The learning community around and including Kyle Academy very successfully
addresses a wide spectrum of learning needs of the learners in its locality through its
partnership. It effectively uses the strengths of local schools, CLD, the police and
local voluntary services, and community groups. As a result of this approach, almost
all young people and most adults are achieving to their full potential. This achieves a
number of key goals in the South Ayrshire Community Plan.
The partners actively promote and secure wellbeing. This is seen as the foundation
for its work in improving learning and increasing life chances. This approach starts
with parents and young children in the early years. The Parents as Early Educators
Programme successfully engages with parents in Forehill Nursery. Parents and very
young children actively engage with early reading in the Bookbugs programme in
local libraries. Both programmes effectively enable parents to develop their
parenting skills and help give their child the best start in life. This approach to wellbeing is continued in work with schools. Young people at primary and secondary
schools work very effectively in health related activities, personal and social
educational programmes such as Fair Trade and Eco-schools. Young people
successfully raised funds to build new community resources such as a local
mountain bike track and to address issues of misuse of alcohol through peer
education. Young people from the learning community engage in Youth Voice
activities in and out of school. Young people actively influence decisions regarding
local services, for example in their learning councils in school, on youth forums, to
develop fair trade approaches for the town of Ayr. They successfully campaigned for
the reduction of prices for young people accessing leisure facilities on a Saturday
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morning. This approach extends to work with adults in the Activity for Health
programme with older adults who participate in a broad range of exercise and health
related programmes. Participants value these experiences, have increased
confidence, feel more included and note improvements in their health.
As a result of these activities focusing on wellbeing, the Kyle Academy Learning
Community is a safer community. Youth related crime and alcohol misuse levels
have fallen significantly. Older young people regularly help their younger peers.
People in the community feel healthier and are actively engaged in a wide range of
activities that increase the vibrancy of the community. Volunteer levels are high and
there is a wide range of community organisations delivering services in sports,
culture and the arts. While these changes are most notable for school age young
people, there is a need to fully capture the impacts on pre-school children and older
adults.
The partners in the learning community are improving learning. They achieve this
through the use of sector leading approaches to partnership work between the
schools, CLD, public services and the voluntary sector. They all use Curriculum for
Excellence to link the school curriculum with achievement as part of a framework to
build skills for learning, life and work. The partners build high levels of ambition,
skills and resilience through the very effective use of award programmes from P6
onwards. Young people from across the Kyle Academy Learning Community are
now actively involved in developing their wider achievement programmes. They
work very successfully with school staff and partner agencies in areas such as Youth
Achievement awards, Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, Modern Apprenticeships as well
as school extra-curricular programmes and youth clubs such as Forehill and the Ark.
As a result, almost all young people achieve a high level award. Adult Learners at
the Learning Shop, the Libraries ICT programme and English for Speakers of Other
Languages successfully achieve outcomes for work, learning and life. Learning
opportunities for adults are both locally accessible and well supported by trained and
enthusiastic staff and volunteers.
In terms of achievement performance, there is an upward trend in award
achievements for Kyle Academy Learning Community across almost all award
programmes for young people. Young people particularly from areas of
disadvantage within the local area, benefit significantly from these approaches.
They have increased confidence, learned new skills, including social skills and
resilience through these experiences and award programmes. This adds value to
their school experience and to their post-school destinations. Young people also
receive high quality personal support at points of transition. There is an increasingly
effective focus to ensure that they successfully progress when they leave school with
just over 90% achieving a positive destination in an area with significant deprivation.
There is a need to now extend this approach with young people to work with adult
learners, particularly in the light of changes to the welfare benefits system.
The partners in the learning community increase life chances by improving
educational attainment. In all attainment measures across S4 to S6 the school is
now above or well above the national average. In almost all measures the school is
in line with or above the average for schools which serve young people with similar
needs and backgrounds. At the same time as it is improving results, the secondary
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school with its partners is narrowing the gap in attainment beyond its comparators.
The gap between the lowest attaining and the highest attaining young people has
narrowed from 2008 to 2012. This is a very significant achievement and evidence of
sustained improvement. Attendance at school is now above national averages and
exclusions are now below average. More young people now enter further and higher
education and are the first members of their family to do so. There is a clear link
between these significantly improved outcomes and the school’s very focused and
effective approaches to partnership working. In work with adult learners, participants
in the STEP Employability Project have all gained nationally recognised accreditation
and participated in work placements. All learners on this programme gain
qualifications and develop their self-confidence.
As a result of this work, learning community partners are raising the bar of
achievement and closing the gap in attainment, despite significant levels of
deprivation in the area. This work with its focus on building resilience, ambition and
skills to support improved achievement and attainment is sector leading. The
Learning Community clearly links its work to the outcomes of the Community Plan
and almost all partners are clear about these links. This learning community actively
and successfully uses learning as a way to build community capacity and to increase
social inclusion. It is beginning to address issues of regeneration and economic
development in a challenging local and national economic context.
3. How well are partners working together and improving the quality of
services and provision?
The partnerships in the Kyle Academy Learning Community are very well developed.
The partners have established a clear sense of identity and purpose through the
development of professional relationships and knowledge of services. There is an
exceptionally strong approach to partnership working characterised by mutual
professional respect and dialogue as well as resource sharing. Young people, adults
and community organisations are also treated as valuable resources with expertise
to draw upon. There are a number of strong examples where young people deliver
education through peer education both in and out of school and in the Forehill
after-school club which is a workers’ cooperative.
The Kyle Academy Learning Community partnership is making very effective use of
available intelligence in both the sharing of information and identification of priorities
for the learning community through its planning documents. These relate directly to
the outcomes of the Community Plan. All partners engage in self-evaluation
activities using a range of tools as appropriate. There is a commitment from all
partners to deliver services together using partners experience and expertise to best
effect. This is being developed successfully in a number of key areas such as
Curriculum for Excellence and Welfare Reform. On these areas there is a strong
and effective focus to develop partnership approaches to training and integrated
delivery. Joint training and self-evaluation could be extended across the work of the
learning community. Partners recognise this and there are already some initial
examples in work with young people. More use of social and community media
could be made to now report collectively on the outcomes of partnerships.
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This inspection of learning and development in the learning community surrounding
Kyle Academy found the following key strengths:
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The sector leading focus on closing the gap that is addressing this issue by
moving beyond education through the work with partners.
Outstanding operational partnerships that are characterised by high levels of
professionalism, mutual respect and willingness to learn from each other and
other examples.
A developing ethos of achievement across the community.
We discussed with partners how they might continue to improve their work. This is
what we agreed with them.
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Extend early years work to develop a focus on closing the developmental gap in
the pre-school years.
Continue to develop innovative partnership approaches to adult learning.
4. What happens at the end of the inspection?
We are satisfied with the overall quality of provision. We are confident that the
learning community’s self-evaluation processes are leading to improvements. As a
result, we will make no further evaluative visits in connection with this inspection.
During the inspection, we identified aspects of innovative practice relating to work
with young people and Curriculum for Excellence which we would like to explore
further. As a result we will work with the learning community and education authority
in order to record and share more widely the innovative practice.
Philip Denning
HM Inspector
11 June 2013
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Additional inspection evidence, such as details of the quality indicator evaluations,
for this learning community can be found on the Education Scotland website at
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/inspectionandreview/reports/othersectors/com
munitylearninganddevelopment/KyleAcademyLC.asp
If you would like to receive this report in a different format, for example, in a
translation you can contact the administration team on 01506 600377.
If you want to give us feedback or make a complaint about our work, please contact
us by telephone on 0141 282 5000, or e-mail:
complaints@educationscotland.gsi.gov.uk or write to us, addressing your letter to
The Complaints Manager, Denholm House, Almondvale Business Park, Livingston,
EH54 6GA.
Text phone users can contact us on 01506 600 236. This is a service for deaf users.
Please do not use this number for voice calls as the line will not connect you to a
member of staff.
Crown Copyright 2013.
Education Scotland
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