Staff and students at West Somerset College are jubilant today after learning that the College has been awarded a rating of ‘Good’ by Ofsted in its recent inspection, just eighteen months after it was judged to require special measures, and three months after becoming part of the Bridgwater College Trust.

This is excellent news for all West Somerset learners and their parents, who can now be confident that the College is providing them with good quality teaching and preparing them effectively for employment or higher level education. The inspection report particularly highlighted the College’s strong leadership in English and maths, which has led to a significant improvement in learner achievements since the start of the academic year, and the way in which all learners are cared for and encouraged to succeed. Inspectors found that the very large majority of teaching across a wide range of subjects is now at least good and that this can be clearly seen in the positive impact on current pupils’ work and progress.

Learners, too, were commended for their aspirational attitude and pride in ‘their’ college, with inspectors noting that they are gaining in self-confidence and have a much more positive attitude to their work and their general self-conduct than previously.

The inspectors commended the acting Principal for her outstanding leadership and the governors for their exceptional depth and breadth of understanding on all aspects of the college.

Speaking after the publication of Ofsted’s report, Jane Aplin, Acting College Principal commented,

“This Ofsted judgement that we are now a ‘Good’ school is well deserved. For the last few months, the College has felt like a great place to learn, with students making increasingly swift progress. I hope that our whole community will read the report in detail. It is the best accolade we could wish for, given the hard work of all associated with the College over the year; including all staff, students, parents and those in our community who have worked with commitment and passion to support us. The expertise from the Bridgwater College Trust has definitely helped to get the college back on track. We are in an excellent position now to become the outstanding school which we all want for the young people in our community”.

Student Becky Ansell was pleased with the outcome,

“The negative press coverage upset us. The school was made to sound much worse than it was – nobody looked inside and understood what it was actually like. We needed to prove that we were not what they were saying we were.”

Another student, Rebecca Dascombe added,

“We will go from strength to strength and only get better.”

Peter Elliott, Executive Head teacher said,

“We are absolutely delighted that the hard work of staff, students and governors over the past 18 months has paid off and we see it as a stepping stone to our ambition of being Ofsted ‘outstanding’. We will seek to build on the significant improvements highlighted by this inspection report, to ensure that our young people both do well academically and are equipped with the work and life skills they need to progress. My thanks go to everyone who has played a part in this exceptional result.”

The full Ofsted report is available on the Ofsted website.