Inspection came too soon, says principal of New College Nottingham after critical report
A CITY college has been told to raise standards by Ofsted inspectors.
They gave New College Nottingham the second-worst rating of "requires improvement".
It comes a year after the college announced it was spending £140 million on revamping its curriculum to match the city's jobs market.
Principal Amarjit Basi said the inspection, which took place between January 21 and 25, came too soon following the changes and is confident future ratings will improve.
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The report, which has just been made public, was critical of a number of factors.
These included not enough 16 to 18-year-olds passing courses, teachers failing to challenge students enough and ineffective lesson planning.
It did acknowledge the curriculum had been changed.
The report said: "Plans to improve the quality of teaching have reduced the proportion of inadequate lessons.
"However, more than half of lessons require improvement and inspectors observed few outstanding lessons."
Mr Basi took over the college a year-and-a-half ago when former principal Geoff Hall retired.
He was behind the curriculum change, which lead to traditional departments and faculties being replaced by 16 academies backed by major employers and modelled on key city industries like tourism and the creative sector.
Two areas – hospitality and catering, and public services and travel and tourism – were rated as "good" by inspectors.
The rest were given "requires improvement".
The report added: "Over the past 18 months, leaders and managers, supported by governors, have successfully undertaken a major strategic review of the college.
"While the inspection has identified teaching and learning, and a number of curriculum areas as requiring improvement, some early signs show these changes are beginning to have a positive impact."
The college, which had previously been given a "good" rating, will now be subject to regular monitoring inspections.
Mr Basi is confident these will show progress has been made.
He said: "I feel the report is a fair one and we will be working hard to ensure we get better reports in the future.
"We're pleased that inspectors have confirmed that NCN is a completely different college to the one it was just 15 months ago."
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