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Valuable support for practitioners now available via Excellence Gateway

The Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) has launched a new online Self-assessment and Improvement Planning guide, to support providers to build their capacity to improve.

Self-assessment is critical to evaluating and improving the quality of learning provision and organisational development. It also informs the thinking of funding bodies and Ofsted inspection teams. This practical user guide has been produced in response to feedback from the sector calling for a new and up-to-date resource for all learning and skills providers. The guide aims to help experienced and new providers carry out effective self-assessment and improvement planning, in turn helping providers improve provision for learners, employers and communities.

The style and content of the guide reflects the inclusive nature of self-assessment and improvement planning and hence the target audience is people who manage or are accountable for self-assessment and improvement planning, and those who are putting it into practice, such as delivery teams of teachers, trainers and assessors.

Although the Guide should save practitioners time, its main purpose is to provide them with tools to carry out self-assessment and improvement planning. The guide provides up-to-date references to current policy (including changes to inspection), useful links to information and examples of effective practice.

The Guide is relevant to all types of post-16 provision. It is principally for LSC funded providers. However, there are tools and links which may be of use to Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) funded providers who need to check that their self-assessment meets DWP requirements.

The Self-assessment and Improvement Planning guide is available exclusively via the Excellence Gateway - LSIS’s online portal for the learning and skills sector – and provides practitioners with vital guidance and policy updates. It provides ideas, useful tools and up-to-date information for practitioners who are responsible for self assessment and improvement planning.

Linda Wilson, Head of Continuous Improvement, LSIS, states; “LSIS is committed to supporting providers and practitioners to improve the quality of their learning provision. The new Self-assessment and Improvement Planning guide provides practical advice for providers on how to support their organisation’s development needs and evaluate progress. The combined online and downloadable format is easy to use and enables practitioners to access a number of relevant materials and documents that sit alongside the self-assessment guide on the Excellence Gateway”.

Research into the new Self-assessment and Improvement Planning guide was carried out by the LSIS Support for Excellence programme in collaboration with the LSIS research team.

To download the new Self-assessment and Planning guide please click here. The Excellence Gateway incorporates some 50 education websites and a resource bank comprising more than 75,000 pages, and 12,000 separate pieces of content.