Setting

Midlands Regional Office T 08456 40 40 40 enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk www.ofsted.gov.uk

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Geoff Trodd Service Manager for Community Learning Jackie Vaz Family Learning Manager London Borough of Harrow Po Box 57 HA1 2XF

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and communities

Thank you for your hospitality and co-operation during my visit on the 11 November 2008. I am particularly grateful to you, Jackie and your staff for all the work involved in preparing for the visit and for giving up a great deal of time to meet with me. Please pass on my thanks to those concerned.

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and communities

The visit provided much useful evidence, which will contribute to our national evaluation and reporting for the family learning survey. It was particularly interesting to see provision in the Children’s Centre and the case study on the work you do with Somalian families.

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and communities

The evidence used to inform the judgements made on this one day visit included: discussions with staff, scrutiny of the examples of good practice and case studies provided and a visit to a family learning activity. A range of documents was reviewed. Thank you to Jackie for emailing further information to me.

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and communities

Overall, the family learning provision I sampled during my one day visit to the London Borough of Harrow’s Adult and Community Learning Service is good. I agreed to provide a summary of the good practice seen and to identify some areas for development, and I outline the main findings as bulleted points below. The main strengths are:

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and communities

 Very well managed and organised family learning provision  Good collaboration between partners to meet both the strategic aims of the service and enhance the offer  Very clear and useful handbooks produced to support both wider family learning and family literacy and numeracy, tutors  Well established and embedded equality and diversity practice through carefully targeted and prioritised provision  Good teaching and learning  Good venue, facilities and resources available at the children’s centre visited

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and communities

 The poor punctuality at the children’s centre family learning activity  Increasing the percentage of men participating in family learning programmes

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and communities

I hope these observations are useful as you continue to develop your Family Learning provision. If there are any points or aspects of the visit you wish to discuss, please contact me. As we will be evaluating the survey, you may be contacted in the future to find out your views. I hope you will contribute to this evaluation.

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and communities

As I explained in my previous letter, a copy of this letter will be published on the Ofsted Website.

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