MINEHEAD'S Foxes Academy - a specialist residential college which provides a realistic working environment for adults with moderate learning difficulties - has been judged outstanding in all areas by Government Ofsted inspectors. The seafront facility, which includes a fully functional hotel open to the public, currently has 56 learners aged between 18 and 27 whose training helps them into part-time or full-time employment in hospitality and catering. Inspector Susan Preece heaped praise upon the college's achievements and awarded it outstanding and top grade one marks for its effectiveness of provision, capacity to improve, achievements and standards, quality of provision and leadership and management. "This is an outstanding college," said Ms Preece in her report. "Levels of achievement are outstanding. "Learners make very good progress in a range of national awards and in their communication and personal skills." Over the past three years, more than 70 per cent of third year leavers have gone into full or part-time employment, with many of the remainder taking up higher level courses and voluntary work. And nearly all learners progress to an independent or semi-independent living environment. The college's key strengths include: l Outstanding levels of achievement in national awards. l Highly effective teaching. l Innovative use of learning environments. l Outstanding rate of progression into employment. l Robust systems and high priority for health and safety issues. l Comprehensive and rigourous quality improvement processes. l Outstanding and inspirational leadership. The only areas identified for improvement were the need to give learners opportunities to have a corporate voice and the "coherence" of its transition programme into careers or higher learning, coupled with improvements to its careers library. The inspector concluded that leadership and management at the college were outstanding, describing directors Maureen Tyler-Moore and Sue Jenkins as "inspirational" within a positive and supportive culture. Senior managers responsible for the different aspects of the curriculum were said to work effectively together to ensure that it was coherent and that good practice was successfully shared. The college was actually said to underestimate the quality of its teaching and learning in its self- assessment report. Teachers were said to prepare well for lessons with vocational tutors making very effective use of their catering experience and the excellent resources available to them. Ms Preece said: "The college has made outstanding progress in addressing the key issues from the last inspection." In a statement, Ms Jenkins and Ms Tyler-Moore said the college's mission was to provide training and care for learners to the highest possible standard in a wide range of areas and to help students integrate with society and be seen as valuable people who have skills to contribute. "We are very proud of the fact we have been awarded grade one for every one of the areas that Ofsted grades. "We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone within Foxes Academy, as they have all contributed to the outstanding grade one awards." Photo: Steve Guscott.
