Hi Neena,
I'm really glad you posted and thanks for your advice and comments.
The inspection has come and gone and was fine and the inspector was a very nice person from what I could tell. But I feel I should apologise that I may not have been as clear as I could have been. I have a fairly good idea what is involved in Ofsted inspections in formal accredited ESOL - although I havent worked full time in ESOL since I came back to the UK, most of my work (research) involves ESOL locally. So I’m aware of the framework for inspecting ESOL in formal accredited settings. (Note: I have to admit that my own posting was to an extent provoked by the fact that the organisation under whose umbrella the classes are held, sent me a number of emails suggesting I produce a scheme of work, lesson plans, evidence of progression etc etc. Which led me to expect, albeit with some surprise, that our classes would be inspected under metrics which apply to full-time, accredited ESOL provision and I was expecting the same type of inspection that colleagues in the (excellent) local full time accredited provision experience. Thus the panic.
But our class is non-accredited/informal community based ESOL – another way of looking at this is by considering our class as participant-led informal adult learning - and my questions primarily concerned how, and why, Ofsted could or would inspect such approaches, and under what frameworks. As it turns out, the inspection was fine and class was fun as usual. A colleague who sent me a private email on this was probably the most accurate in her description of what would happen. That is to say that because our provision is within a Children’s Centre and that it was the centre that was being inspected, the inspection was a brief visit (to our class) intended to assess how well we support the work of the centre rather than a full Ofsted ESOL inspection.
But – and I don’t want to clog up the forum so I will be brief and end on a short point followed by a question I hope you can help with as I havent found the answer elsewhere – community ESOL does exist in its own right with different outcomes, very different conditions and to an extent different learning and teaching than accredited formal ESOL. It doesnt quite 'fit' in with generic adult and community learning I dont think (from Ofsted website) . Bearing that in mind, this is my question - are there specific Ofsted criteria for inspecting community based non-accredited ESOL ? Or is community based non-accredited ESOL inspected either as a support service to other services (as happened today) or under the frameworks for formal accredited ESOL.
Martin
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