Colleges rate own performance too highly, warns standards watchdog

Students at Scotland’s colleges are being let down by a series of failures in the way courses are evaluated, a new report has found.

Education Scotland, the Scottish Government agency charged with improving standards in education, said overall attainment for full-time learners had not improved for the past three years.

It highlighted a number of areas where colleges could improve learning for the 500,000 people using their services every year and said some institutions had an “overly optimistic” view of their own performance.

The body said too few colleges were properly evaluating themselves, with many failing to put in place proper arrangements to share information with both universities and schools.

However, the report noted arrangements for self-evaluation had “matured and improved” with most colleges putting in place quality assurance and improvement practices.

Bill Maxwell, transitional chief executive of Education Scotland, said: “Scotland’s colleges are major players in the education system who collectively provide education and training to some half a million learners each year. That means there is a huge responsibility on them to constantly look for ways to improve their performance and delivery, and, most importantly, improve benefit to learners.

“Embedding the culture and practices of self-evaluation is a vital part of bringing about such improvements. It is encouraging to see Scotland’s colleges are developing and improving their approaches to self-evaluation, albeit there are a number of issues on which more attention should be focused. I hope that this report will help colleges address these issues.”

There are more than 40 colleges in Scotland, but only Aberdeen College, Angus College, Ayr College, Coatbridge College, Inverness College, John Wheatley College in Glasgow, Newbattle College and Kilmarnock College were visited for the report.The Education Scotland report is part of a series of studies undertaken in agreement with the Scottish Funding Council on the quality of provision in the country’s colleges. While it found that for most colleges, self-evaluation was well developed, with contributions from staff and learners, others did not have “sufficiently rigorous or robust approaches”.

It also noted that most self-evaluation reports failed to reference the promotion of equality and diversity, as well as noting that reports often contained insufficient reflection by staff.

The report found that in several colleges, arrangements for student representations were insufficiently effective.

However, positives highlighted included good working relationships with employers.

Mark Batho, chief executive of the Scottish Funding Council, said: “It is heartening to see the commitment of colleges to enhance and improve quality through self-evaluation and reflection, and the progress made. The report provides some useful pointers for the next phase.”

John Spencer, convener of the principals’ convention at Scotland’s Colleges, said: “All colleges are strongly committed to improving and developing the quality of learning opportunities for our students.”