By Brian Gleeson

Prior Pursglove College, Guisborough, has been judged to be a ‘Good’ college in its recent Ofsted inspection

 The college secured the rating across all areas including overall effectiveness, outcomes for learners, teaching, learning and assessment and leadership and management. The judgment comes after a series of monitoring visits by the education watchdog found Prior Pursglove to be making "good progress" since being rated "inadequate" in early 2014.

During their recent visit, inspectors recognised ‘decisive and successful action’ by leaders to bring about ‘impressive improvement’.

In the published report, Ofsted noted that students make good progress on their courses, teachers have ‘high expectations of students’, students ‘develop skills for study, life and work’ and that there was excellent progression to higher education as many students successfully apply to and are accepted at more prestigious universities’

The report also found that the college ‘responds well to addressing local priorities’, including skills shortages, students receive good support from college staff, both within and beyond the classroom’ and finally the college is an inclusive and supportive environment and student diversity is valued, reflecting the college’s agreed value of respect for self, others and the community.’

Judy Burton, Principal at Prior Pursglove College, said: “We are absolutely delighted to achieve a Grade 2 ‘Good’ Ofsted rating and exceptionally pleased with inspectors’ findings. The new Ofsted framework is designed to be extremely rigorous, and quite rightly focusses on schools and colleges providing the highest standards in teaching and learning.

“We were disappointed with Ofsted’s findings last year but our fantastic team of staff have spent the last fifteen months relentlessly driving improvements across the board to regain our reputation as an excellent college which offers the very best for all students.”

“We were particularly pleased that Ofsted noted the first-class support we offer, giving students a breadth of opportunities which enable them to maximise their learning and subsequently progress to some of the best universities in the country.”