Learning community inspection
A report by HM Inspectorate of Education
Inspection of the learning community
surrounding Peebles High School
Scottish Borders Council
24 May 2011
We inspect learning communities in order to let those who use services and the
local community know whether learning communities provide appropriate learning
opportunities and help learners in their development. We are also interested in
how community and voluntary groups are helped to contribute to making
communities better places to live and work. At the end of inspections, we agree
ways in which staff and volunteers can improve the quality of learning for young
people and adults and how the impact of community and voluntary groups can be
further developed.
At the beginning of the inspection, we ask managers and staff about the strengths
of the learning community, what needs to improve, and how they know. We use
the information they give us to help us plan what we are going to look at. During
the inspection, we join other activities which young people, adults and community
groups are involved in. We also gather the views of learners, active community
members and staff. We find their views very helpful and use them together with
the other information we have collected to arrive at our view of the quality of
provision locally.
This report tells you what we found during the inspection and the quality of
learning and development provided. We describe how well learners are doing
and how good the learning community is at helping them to learn. We comment
on how well staff, learners and groups work together and the difference they are
making in the learning community. Finally, we focus on how well the learning
community is led and how leaders help the learning community achieve its aims.
If you would like to learn more about our inspection of the learning community,
please visit www.hmie.gov.uk.
Contents
1.
The learning community
2.
Particular strengths of the learning community
3.
How well do participants learn and achieve?
4.
How well are communities developing and achieving?
5.
How effective are providers in improving the quality of services?
6.
Does the learning community have a clear sense of direction?
7.
What happens next?
1. The learning community
The learning community around Peebles High School has a population of
approximately 20,000 in the sparsely populated rural area of Tweeddale. The
majority of the population is concentrated in the town of Peebles and in the
surrounding villages of Innerleithen, Walkerburn and West Linton. Unemployment
is lower than the Scottish Borders Council and national averages.
2. Particular strengths of the learning community
•
Positive relationships between staff and learners.
•
Strong practice in literacies, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL)
and family learning.
•
Strong sense of community with committed volunteers.
3. How well do participants learn and achieve?
Well-established systems in adult learning enable partners to demonstrate
positive achievements. Data gathered shows improving trends over time in
important aspects of work, including the numbers of participants engaged and
making progress. Learning is of a high quality with a large proportion of adult
learners reaching their learning goals and expressing satisfaction with their
learning experience. Over the past year, community learning and development
(CLD) providers have worked to extend this systematic approach to youth work
and work with community groups. As a result, there is now some baseline
information for those areas. A new management information system has been
introduced to link work to the Single Outcome Agreement. Managers are now
better able to track progress. It is difficult to extract local information from
Scottish Borders Council wide data. Staff need to continue to improve their
understanding of outcomes and their ability to set clear and measurable
objectives.
Young people
Young people are learning new skills and making good progress. Peer educators
in the Up2U project are delivering well-received learning opportunities on drugs
and alcohol to children in primary schools. They are developing skills in
presentation and film making through a project on cyber bullying. Well-led village
youth clubs in Innerleithen and Walkerburn enable young people to stay safe,
healthy and active in a friendly environment. Peebles Youth Club (Ishuze)
engages young people in high quality music activities. Those taking part in music
and recording sessions return to help others and share their skills. Peebles Youth
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Trust’s mentoring programme is helping vulnerable young people to remain
engaged in learning. A few local young people are involved in the Scottish
Borders’ helping young people’s participation and engagement programme and
have gained volunteering certificates through representing others. Overall,
numbers of young people involved in provision are low and staff do not yet have
enough information about opportunities provided by other youth work
organisations in the area. There is limited accreditation of achievement through
the use of awards. The school and learning community now need to ensure
earlier and better planned intervention for young people at risk of not achieving in
Peebles High School. School and CLD staff now need to work together to plan
and implement Curriculum for Excellence successfully.
Adults
High quality, effectively delivered adult learning programmes are helping
participants to achieve. Those taking part in literacies provision and in ESOL are
gaining self-respect and benefiting in their employment and family lives. Learners
are challenged to stretch themselves and get the most from their learning.
Consistent use of individual learning plans helps learners to consider their goals
and review their progress. Learners’ achievements are celebrated regularly in
national and local events. Staff are effective in engaging disadvantaged groups.
Good links with other training organisations, employers and Borders College
enable learners to make effective progress, gain qualifications and enhance their
employability skills. Peebles Citizens’ Advice Bureau provides high quality
training, assessment and accreditation for volunteers. The intergenerational
project at St Ronan’s Primary School is very effectively enabling children, parents
and grandparents to learn together. Families have developed new skills and new
ways to enjoy learning through the medium of social history and the use of
computers. Computer related learning opportunities are offered by a number of
different providers. There is scope to coordinate these opportunities more
effectively to help learners to make more informed choices.
4. How well are communities developing and achieving?
Skilled community representatives work effectively in a large number of
successful community groups to develop and improve the area. The La Mancha
Hub group has formed a limited company to develop a former school building into
a community resource. Local enterprises are benefiting through renting lower
cost office space. Local artists are able to display and sell their work at a gallery
in the hub. Highly successful community allotment groups have been supported
through the Healthy Living Network. Volunteers have distributed allotment
produce and raised health awareness. A few have progressed into employment
in the food and retail sector. Future Innerleithen has been successful in engaging
a high proportion of the village’s population in its local development plan. Large
numbers benefit from voluntary activity across the learning community. Through
Onlineborders and Bridge Builders, groups use information and communications
technology effectively to share information on their activities. Community
organisations would benefit from more regular local events to celebrate
achievement and share plans, knowledge and skills. There is no clear link
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between the activities of local groups and local community plans. Staff now need
to clearly identify gaps in participation and involve stakeholders in agreeing
priorities in the area.
5. How effective are providers in improving the quality of services?
Strong approaches to effective self-evaluation in adult learning have recently been
extended to other aspects of CLD activity. Staff are now well-placed to continue
to improve their planning. Consistent use of activity planning and evaluation tools
is helping all staff to reflect more effectively on their work. Good progress is being
made in gathering and analysing information and in reporting progress to
stakeholders. Recent improvement has being made to involving partners in
shared planning of youth work. Staff now need to ensure that the systems they
are applying are helping them to achieve clarity and secure improvement. Much
of the information used to report progress to stakeholders in the Scottish Border’s
Council business plan is related to activities undertaken and resources used
rather than the impacts and outcomes achieved.
6. Does the learning community have a clear sense of direction?
Staff are strongly committed to meeting the needs of learners. They have
developed a greater capacity to recognise and plan to meet challenges. The
Learning Community Board structure around Peebles High School has the
potential to strengthen a partnership approach in work with children and young
people. Progress has been made in establishing systems to support planning for
improvement at a Scottish Borders wide level. Staff now need to focus on
enabling stakeholders in the local area to identify what has been achieved and
what should be done next.
7. What happens next?
There are some important improvements needed, but because CLD providers
have a good understanding of their strengths and areas for improvement, and
communities are achieving well, we have ended the inspection process at this
stage. We will monitor progress through our regular contact with the education
authority.
We have agreed the following areas for improvement with the education authority
and its partners.
•
Set and implement clear local priorities for youth work with stakeholders.
•
Extend accreditation opportunities in youth work.
•
Improve outcome focus in plans.
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Quality indicators help CLD providers and inspectors to judge what is good and
what needs to be improved in the learning community. You can find these quality
indicators in the HMIE publication “How good is our community learning and
development? 2”.
HMIE checks five important quality indicators to keep track of how well all Scottish
CLD provision is doing. Here are the results for the learning community
surrounding Peebles High School.
Improvements in performance
Impact on young people
Impact on adults
Impact of capacity building on communities
Improving services
Managing Inspector: Peter Hamilton
24 May 2011
4
satisfactory
satisfactory
very good
good
satisfactory
This report uses the following word scale to make clear judgements made by
inspectors.
excellent
very good
good
satisfactory
weak
unsatisfactory
outstanding, sector leading
major strengths
important strengths with some areas for improvement
strengths just outweigh weaknesses
important weaknesses
major weaknesses
If you would like to find out more about our inspections or get an electronic copy
of this report, please go to www.hmie.gov.uk.
Please contact us if you want to know how to get the report in a different format,
for example, in a translation, or if you wish to comment about any aspect of our
inspections. You can contact us at HMIEenquiries@hmie.gsi.gov.uk or write to us
at BMCT, HM Inspectorate of Education, Denholm House, Almondvale Business
Park, Almondvale Way, 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.
You can find our complaints procedure on our website www.hmie.gov.uk or
alternatively you can contact our Complaints Manager, at the address above or by
telephoning 01506 600259.
Crown Copyright 2011
HM Inspectorate of Education