Royal Deaf Education Trust

Exeter Royal Academy for Deaf Education Report following a monitoring visit to a ‘requires improvement’ provider

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Name of lead inspector: Kathryn Rudd HMI

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Type of provider: Independent specialist college

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Address: 50 Topsham Road, Exeter, Devon EX2 4NF Monitoring visit: Exeter Royal Academy for Deaf Education, 12–13 February 2020

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Context and focus of visit

Exeter Royal Academy for Deaf Education was inspected in January 2019. At that time, inspectors judged the overall effectiveness of the provision to require improvement.

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Context and focus of visit

The focus of this monitoring visit was to evaluate the progress that leaders and managers have made in addressing the main areas for improvement identified at the previous inspection.

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Context and focus of visit

The academy is currently based in Exeter, although it is moving to a purpose-built site in Exmouth. At the time of the monitoring visit, 29 students aged between 16 and 25 years attended the college.

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Reasonable progress

Leaders have redesigned the curriculum based on feedback from students and staff. They now offer four curriculum pathways which better meet the needs, interests and aspirations of their students. As a result, most students are motivated and engaged in learning.

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Reasonable progress

Leaders have recently introduced an ‘assess, plan, do, review’ approach to improving the quality of teaching. This is helping teachers plan learning strategies which support students to make more rapid progress from their starting points. Students with more complex needs now benefit from opportunities to practise new skills in a range of community settings.

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Reasonable progress

A specialist team now undertakes a comprehensive assessment of students’ needs, interests and goals before they start at college. Managers use this information well to ensure that students are on the correct pathway. However, they correctly recognise that students are set too many targets. This means that teachers are not always clear what skills, knowledge or behaviours students are developing across the curriculum. As a result, students are not always able to transfer this new learning into different situations.

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Reasonable progress

Staff encourage students to become more independent and support them to learn from their mistakes. For example, students are encouraged to travel more independently. Occasionally, they do not get off at the right bus stop. Staff do not routinely intervene but prompt students afterwards to think about ways they could remember where to get off in the future. Monitoring visit: Exeter Royal Academy for Deaf Education, 12–13 February 2020 Leaders have introduced new initiatives designed to improve the quality of teaching and assessment. Not all of these have been successful. More recent work to define the curriculum content has led to positive changes for students and staff. These include reducing the length of individual sessions and increasing the consistency of staff teams. However, it is too early to see the full impact of these latest changes.

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Reasonable progress

Leaders have carefully considered the issues that students, whose first language is British sign language, face with developing their literacy skills. As a result, leaders have established a visual ‘shape coding’ system for students to learn the rules of sentence construction. Although this is a new strategy, there is clear evidence that students are increasing their understanding of spoken and written grammar already.

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Reasonable progress

The increased focus on developing students’ literacy skills across the curriculum is proving effective. In cookery sessions, students are encouraged to develop their knowledge of reading recipes and at the same time develop their knowledge of the ingredients needed.

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Reasonable progress

Staff plan activities that enable students to improve their ability to communicate when working in teams or solving problems. For example, students work together to check whether the sentences they have constructed are grammatically correct.

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Reasonable progress

All students now have a language ‘passport’. These detail the best ways of supporting students to develop their language skills. Speech and language staff work alongside teachers to review these passports regularly. As a result, students gain from more consistent advice and support across the curriculum.

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Reasonable progress

Staff use verbal and signing feedback effectively. They highlight areas students need to work on and the strategies they can employ to improve their work. However, in written feedback staff do not routinely identify students’ grammatical errors or establish what they can do to improve.

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Reasonable progress

The majority of teachers develop students’ English and mathematics skills. They relate new skills and knowledge to activities students understand; for example, measuring the perimeter and area of furniture to ensure that it fitted in a newly decorated room. However, a minority of teachers base the work set, and the resources used, on the qualification criteria rather than the students’ interests or requirements. As a result, students do not understand the relevance to their lives and do not embed the new knowledge in their long-term memory. Monitoring visit: Exeter Royal Academy for Deaf Education, 12–13 February 2020

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Reasonable progress

Leaders have taken positive steps to ensure that learners are better informed about their next steps after college. They have set up an internal careers team and recruited an independent careers service who work closely together to offer realistic advice and support; for example, ensuring that a student who wanted to become an actor understood that their income could be inconsistent.

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Reasonable progress

The members of the transition team have a wide range of experience which they share to help students better understand their options after college. Transition staff are now working more closely with care, therapy and education staff. As a result, students learn relevant life skills and knowledge, then can practise these in a range of settings. These include learning how to book interpreters for meetings or understand how to take gas and electricity meter readings.

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Reasonable progress

Managers are building relationships with a smaller group of more committed employers whose organisations offer a wider range of job roles. These work placements enable students to gain skills, knowledge and behaviours that directly link to their long-term goals. Supported interns work effectively in different jobs across the local National Health Service trust.

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Reasonable progress

The new curriculum pathways focus more on students’ longer-term goals. An extended personal development programme is also proving successful. Last term, this focused on democracy and understanding the voting system. As a result, most students voted in the general election as they felt they could now make an informed decision. However, this work is new, and staff rightly recognise that they need to continue to develop this part of the curriculum, particularly to support students to improve their resilience and awareness of the wider world. Monitoring visit: Exeter Royal Academy for Deaf Education, 12–13 February 2020 regulates and inspects to achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages. It regulates and inspects childcare and children’s social care, and inspects the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), schools, colleges, initial teacher

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Reasonable progress

training, further education and skills, adult and community learning, and education and training in prisons and other secure establishments. It assesses council children’s services, and inspects services for children looked after, safeguarding and child protection.

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Reasonable progress

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