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Minutes
The Henley College Corporation
MINUTES of the Meeting of the Strategy, Students and Curriculum Committee
held on 25th November 2010 at 5:30pm
Members present:
Louise Adams (Member)
Catharine Darnton (Member/Partner School Head)
Tom Espley (Principal/Member)
David Golby (Staff Member)
Jasminder Love (Provisional Parent Governor)
Steve Matthews (Member/Chair for this meeting)
Helen Nacai (Student representative in lieu of Charlotte Brooker)
Jasmine Peris (Student Member)
Tony Sanderson (Member)
In attendance:
Peter Allen (Assistant Principal/Student Services)
Simon Cuthbert (Assistant Principal/Curriculum & Quality)
Margaret McGrory (Corporation Secretary)
Agenda
item
1.1 10/11
Minute
Action by:
Opening of meeting
The meeting opened at 5:37pm.
Owing to the recent resignation of James Porter from the Corporation,
the Chair for this committee was vacant. Following an appeal by the
Corporation Secretary for volunteers for future chair, S Matthews had
offered to chair this meeting and had persuaded Susan Norton to take
the Chair for this Committee for the rest of the academic year. S Norton
was unable to attend this meeting as she is unavailable on Thursday
evenings.
There was unanimous approval for S Matthews to chair this meeting and
for S Norton to become chair from the next meeting onwards.
The Chair introduced Mrs Jasminder Love to the Committee as the
College’s new Parent Governor.
The Chair also welcomed Jasmine Peris to the Committee. J Peris is
one of the Student Members of the Corporation by virtue of her position
as Vice President (and now acting President) of the Student’s Union.
Due to Charlotte Brooker’s resignation as Student Union President, due
to ill health, the meeting was also attended by the Student Union’s
Charities Office, Helen Nacai.
1.2 10/11
Apologies for absence
Apologies for absence were received from S Norton, S Wiborg and J
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Wehmeier, Quality Manager.
All other committee members were present.
1.3 10/11
Declaration of interests
No interests were declared.
1.4 10/11
Minutes of the meeting of 24 May 2010
The committee agreed that the minutes were an accurate record of the
meeting of 24 May 2010 and the minutes were signed by the Chair.
1.5 10/11
Matters arising
See page 5, item 3.6, 2.9 – The Corporation had approved the SAR at
the meeting on 29 March. It had been noted that the Assistant Principal
/Curriculum & Quality would meet with the new SU Executive to discuss
the SAR after the May half term. This item was carried forward.
Assistant
Principal/
C&Q
Student
Members
See page 8, item 3.8 – When considering item 1.3 of the operational
plan, it was commented that student experiences of the tutorial
programme are mixed. Some tutors simply read out letters or College
information, whilst others work with the students well and give good
feedback. It was proposed by the Principal, and agreed, that a Lead Principal/
Tutor should be invited to the next meeting of this committee to report on Corporation
Secretary
the inconsistency experienced by students. This item was carried
forward to the March meeting.
See page 9, item 3.9 – It was suggested, and generally agreed that the
next meeting of this committee should consider further the points made in
the discussion about the role of the Curriculum Board. This item was
carried forward to the March Meeting.
Principal/
Corporation
Secretary/
Committee
Chair
See page 11, item 3.12 – it was noted that C Darnton had advised the
Committee of the existence of Oxfordshire County Council guidance on
staff conduct in relation to social networking sites and she had
subsequently forwarded a copy to the College. The Principal stated at Corporation
this meeting (25 Nov) that he would like a copy forwarded to the next Secretary/
Principal
meeting and a discussion held about “cyberbullying”.
See page 12, item 3.14 – The committee approved the terms of
reference as drafted and approved the draft standing agenda with one
change (the word “recommend” is to be substituted for “determine” in the
last item of the “Each Meeting” section).
The committee agreed to recommend to the Corporation that the terms of
reference and standing agenda should be approved. These two items
are to be followed up by the Corporation Secretary.
1.6 10/11
Corporation
Secretary
Corporation
Secretary
Feedback from Recent Ofsted Inspection
The Chair expressed his thanks to all concerned for their hard work in
preparing for, and contributing to the recent Ofsted inspection.
The Principal thanked the Assistant Principal/Curriculum & Quality (C&Q)
for his role as College nominee and his contribution in obtaining a good
report. He advised the Committee that there were some very important
actions to enact. The College’s overall rating was “Good” but greater
consistency needed to be achieved and specific points needed
improvement. He thanked the Students Union for their help during the
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inspection.
The Assistant Principal/C&Q reported that superficially there was no
change in the overall rating as the College had received a “Good” report
last time. However, consistency was key. The outcomes were good but
the value added could be improved and some subject areas were not as
good as others. The Chair asked for clarification on what was meant by
“value added”. The Assistant Principal/C&Q explained that students get
an average score from their GCSE results at school. On the basis of this
they are given a projection of their likely results at A and AS level and for
National Diploma courses. The actual results are then compared with
this forecast.
If students did well at school, it is difficult to get a value added score for
them. C Darnton pointed out that different Ofsted inspectors seem to
take different views on this. One local school recently received an
“Outstanding” score without having a clear value added score. In her
opinion, the difference between subjects was more important.
The Assistant Principal/C&Q went on to point out that a particular Ofsted
concern was whether all students benefitted to the same extent from their
lecturers and tutors. The College was asked to list its 15 best lecturers
during the inspection. All received a “Good” or “Outstanding” rating
which confirms that the College SLT know who their strong staff are.
Governors came out well during the inspection and the College was
considered to have good governance, leadership and management.
Quality was weaker with some individual teachers not being aware of
their weaknesses as identified by their lead tutors.
On being asked about their own experiences of their tutors, J Peris
reported that her tutor was excellent, always covered matters arising and
arranged good talks from outside the College. H Nacai reported that she
received good tutorials covering newsletters and UCAS applications.
Another area for significant improvement is Equality & Diversity (E&D). C
Darnton asked if the College management knew E&D would be a major
part of the inspection. The Assistant Principal/C&Q said he knew it would
be a limiting grade but it was clear that they were looking for something
unusually special rather than just good examples.
D Golby reported that since Ofsted didn’t see E&D embedded in lesson
plans etc., they didn’t accept that it was embedded.
L Adams asked how E&D should be embedded in the plan for a science
lesson, for example.
The Assistant Principal/C&Q gave an example of a Physics lesson where
although the majority of students were boys, they should be reminded
that Physics is for everyone by reinforcing images of girls studying
Physics.
C Darnton feels that we need to give an experience of E&D that is not
readily available to students in the local community. The Principal
reported that this was the toughest part of the inspection although the
outcomes show that we are doing well.
J Love offered to help promote E&D within the College. She pointed out
that there are many more subtle areas to be looked at than just the basic
ethnic groups e.g. making sure that Eastern European students aren’t
feeling isolated.
D Golby feels that the College looks for problems with minority groups
rather than celebrating its successes. J Love suggested promoting E&D
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successes on the College website.
The Principal concluded the discussion by stating his intention to produce
an action plan from the Ofsted report. The College will then be on track
to becoming “Outstanding”. He hoped to use the Staff meeting at the end
of December, the Staff INSET day in January and governor’s training on
7th February to formulate this. Other areas of the inspection apart from
E&D were as expected.
1.7 10/11
Student Applications, Enrolments and Funding Against Plan
The Principal presented his report (see Appendix 1.7). He reported that it
had been a challenge to achieve our funding target for this year and
numbers would be difficult to maintain. Although the College had steadily
grown in recent years, national demographics showed a 7% reduction in
16-19 year olds. We had 100 more applications this year compared with
last year but the conversion rate was lower, resulting in slightly fewer 1619 students but the College gained some NEETS (Not in Education,
Employment or Training). A level numbers continue to grow, IB numbers
remained the same and National Diploma numbers were down.
We received more students this year from Icknield and Langtree partner
schools but less from Gillotts. C Darnton informed the Committee that
Gillotts don’t always know where their students have gone but
Connexions should. Students will pick particular courses based on
sibling feedback.
C Darnton
C Darnton will forward information from Connexions when received.
L Adams gave her opinion that many are choosing to stay in a school
environment as it is felt they will perform better.
The Assistant Principal/C&Q reported that Highdown have become an
academy and so are attracting students away from Chiltern Edge and
Langtree.
The Principal reported that Reading College has re-invented itself and
BCA are looking for more students. However, despite the pressures, the
Henley College has grown by approx. 500 more students over the last
few years.
The Chair asked the Principal to include this report in his report to the
Principal
Corporation in December.
1.8 10/11
Annual Report on Student Achievement and Value Added
The Assistant Principal/C&Q presented his report on the LAT (Learner
Achiever Tracker) (see Appendix 1.8a.) There are different ways of
measuring Value Added. The LAT involves state schools only and
comes straight out of the exam board results so it is not open to doctoring
by schools. It shows students achieve in accordance with expectations
for A Level and BND but more of them achieve in line with expectations
compared with the national average. Although the results for the IB are
negative overall there is doubt as to whether they can be successfully
measured using the LAT so we can’t depend on this report as a measure
for the IB.
Results for English Language don’t look good but there were issues with
the marking of coursework which have now been put right.
Some BND results are very high despite taking in students with C/D/E
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results at GCSE and some have since gone on to university.
The Assistant Principal/C&Q then turned to the draft Self Assessment
Report (SAR) for 2009/10 (see Appendix 1.8b).
He drew the
Committee’s attention to section 2.5 on page 29 showing the latest LSC
Learner Responsive data where it is reported “the 09/10 overall success
rate of 83.2% is above the latest available 75th percentile (81.8%), putting
the Henley College in the top quartile of all college for success rates.”
Currently the College is performing as well as other sixth form colleges
but we want to be better. The Dept of Ed. Performance date on page 31
shows a year on year improvement. The Assistant Principal/C&Q would
like to see the score go from 210 this year to 220 before he feels we can
say we are doing really well.
The Henley Training Company had an Ofsted grade of “2” despite the
fact that we are nearly 20% above the timely national benchmarks. Train
to Gain (adults doing NVQs in the workplace) are, again, higher than the
national average.
C Darnton asked why the Henley Training Company (HTC) operate
under a different name from the rest of The Henley College. The
Assistant Principal/Student Services replied that it was a different
marketing brand.
L Adams asked whether the NEETs would get better support within The
Henley College rather than within the HTC. The Principal replied that
there was good support within the HTC and that students there had opted
out of mainstream college courses so we needed to have a different
approach to supporting these students and liaising with employers.
The Assistant Principal/C&Q went on to talk about the 3 year trends in
A2s. Getting success rates at A2 was becoming more difficult, hovering
at the early 90s%. The results on page 35, however, show our A2 results
very favourably against other institutions. The results for AS levels were
less high. This may be due to the fact that most students drop 1 subject
at the end of their 1st year so they mentally give up on these subjects
before they take their exams.
C Darnton warned that students need to ensure that they choose to study
the right combination of subjects before enrolling. She felt that more
liaison between the College and Gillotts School would be useful to
achieve this.
C Darnton left the meeting at 6:55pm.
The Assistant Principal/C&Q went on to report a massive improvement
in IB success rates. These were slightly down on ideal grades but the
average point score was 32.
The biggest room for improvement is in the GCSE results.
There is a smaller gap between the genders than in the national average.
Where students get learning support, they do better than those without
support.
Pathways were recently rated as “Outstanding”.
On page 47 of the report, the results for “Ethnicity” were based on very
small groups and so the statistics are not representative.
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1.9 10/11
Minutes
Review of Operational Plan 2009/10
The Assistant Principal/C&Q presented the College’s Strategic Plan for
2009/10/11 (see Appendix 1.9). He reported that Ofsted were pleased
within this report as a good source of information on how progress is
measured and monitored and it shows a high proportion of objectives
being completed or nearing completion. He pointed out that noncurriculum items such as buildings were not always under our control.
S Matthews queried item 3.1a on page 15. Although the report stated
that the item was complete, Ofsted were not happy about the outcome.
He asked whether we should be more critical of ourselves. The Assistant
Principal/C&Q replied that this was subject to further review.
1.10 10/11
Report on Safeguarding
The Assistant Principal/Student Services (SS) presented his report on
Safeguarding (see Appendix 1.10). This area came out well during
Ofsted. Coach parking continues to be an issue but the College feel that
the area parked in by the coaches is the safest for the students. Many
sensitive student problems this year have taken up a lot of lead tutor
time.
1.11 10/11
Report on Equality & Diversity
The Assistant Principal/SS went on to present the report Equality &
Diversity (E&D) (see Appendix 1.11) including an Action Plan for Sept
2010 to July 2011. The Principal advised the Committee that this
document should be treated as a pro-tem starting point with a view to
subsequently developing the document as discussed under item 1.6
above. S Norton has reviewed the document as Equality & Diversity
governor.
A more detailed document will be reviewed at the next meeting of this SLT/ J Love
Committee and J Love offered to work with the Senior Leadership Team
to put the document together.
In the meantime, this version of the document would be forwarded to the
next Corporation Meeting for approval.
Corporation
Secretary
J Love asked the Assistant Principal/SS how and where the College
promoted itself within ethnic minority groups. She suggested that the
College liaise with the local temples, imams and other community groups
and leaders as a quicker way of getting opinions and stronger
relationships than with schools. Often it is the local religious groups who
advice on choice of next educational provider, not the schools.
1.12 10/11
Annual Report on Marketing Strategy
The Assistant Principal/SS presented his Marketing Strategy Report. He
drew the Committee’s attention to the need to investigate the dip in
entrants from Langtree and the need to maximise opportunities for
parents to talk to Lead Tutors.
1.13 10/11
Student Satisfaction Survey/Learner Voice
The Assistant Principal/Student Services presented the results of the
Learner Voice surveys for the last academic year. There are three
surveys, the first performed internally for students after their first few
weeks at college, the second carried out as a national survey by the
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Skills Funding Agency as part of their Framework for Excellence review,
and the third as an internal end of year questionnaire.
In the national survey, the lowest scores were achieved for
 The advice given about what to do after college
 Acting on the views of learners
The Principal reported that the College hopes to run a careers fair in
future in response to the first point. Time available from Connexions staff
will probably be subject to spending cuts. Jasmine Peris felt that some
students may feel left out in tutor time where time is spent going through
UCAS applications.
The Principal also reported that there is room for improvement in the
variety of teaching and learning methods and that this was a recurring
theme.
1.14 10/11
Overview of Educational and Strategic Issues Relevant to the
College
The Principal presented his report giving an Overview of Educational and
Strategic Issues relevant to the College (see Appendix 1.14). His report
summarised what was known so far with respect to budgetary cuts from
the Department for Education and the Department for Business,
Innovation and Skills, the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance
Allowance (EMA) thought to affect 25% of students at the College, and
the raising of the cap in tuition fees for higher education.
1.15 10/11
Any Other Business
There was no other business to discuss.
1.16 10/11
Items to be Taken Forward to Next Corporation Meeting
Report on Equality & Diversity (Students).
1.17 10/11
1.18 10/11
Corporation
Secretary
The Principal’s report to the Corporation meeting will summarise the rest.
Date and Time of Next Meeting
The next scheduled meeting is on Monday 28th February 2011 at 5:30pm.
Meeting Closure
The meeting closed at 7:34pm.
MINUTES of the meeting held on 25 November 2010 were agreed and accepted as a true and
accurate record and signed by the Chair
………………………………....……………..
on ………………………………………….
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