Dear Students
Inspection of Rainford High Technology College, St Helens, WA11 8NY
My colleagues and I enjoyed our recent inspection of your college and we would like to thank those of you who took the time to talk to and share your views with us. We were impressed with the maturity of those conversations and what you told us helped us to come to a conclusion about how well the college is doing.
Different groups of you told us, and we agree with you, that you are well looked after in the college, that academic standards are high, especially in mathematics and some of the technology subjects, and that most of the teaching in the college is good. You told us, and your parents appear to agree, that the security arrangements for ensuring your safety are good, and that students’ behaviour is good for most of the time and when it isn’t it is dealt with well by the college. You are less happy with the building and disappointed that it is going to take so many years to improve.
We think that your college is giving you a satisfactory standard of education but that some of you are not achieving as well as you should, especially in Years 7 to 9 in, for example, science and English compared with mathematics. We believe that all the test data the college collects from you should be used more effectively to put this right. We also feel that the curriculum you receive does not include enough opportunities for students in Years 10 and 11 to take alternative courses, which would also have a recognised certificate at the end of them. Finally, we think that monitoring of the work in the classrooms should be more regular and more systematic in order to guarantee that teaching and learning is at least good in every classroom.
On behalf of the inspectors I wish you all every success in the future.
John Ashton
Lead Inspector