Page 10 - ELG1601 Jun Issue 437

Page ii ELquality analysis 2016

The benefit of British Council inspection
n this special supplement we
are looking at one element
Iof the information provided
in ELgo – quality. Our qual-
ity scores are entirely based on Melanie Butler explains how we quantify quality based on each centre’s results
the British Council inspection
reports. We are focusing on the
provision for adult students, If a centre fails any one of the ISI: meets ISI: exceeds
defined as those over 16 years four main headings, it is placed expectations expectations
old, and thus on three main types under review and the publish- Distribution of all BC-accredited 60
of course providers inspected able statement is withdrawn. UK language centres
by the Council – universities, On ELgo the entry is marked 50
state further education colleges as needing to be re-inspected
and private language schools, and none of the information 40
including chains. is published. In the graphs in 90
The British Council measures the features on these pages the
quality under four main head- percentage of centres awaiting 80 30 Number of schools
ings: management; resources re-inspection is marked W for Number of schools
and environment, teaching and withdrawn or simply stated. 70 20
learning; welfare; and student The main information source
services. In 2014 a fifth cat- on quality for these pages – 60
egory, care of under-18s, was and, indeed, on ELgo – is the 10
introduced – not only for chil- summary statements. To calcu- 50
dren’s courses but also providers late the overall score for each 0
of adult courses enrolling any- centre we add together the total 40
one under 18 years old. number of strengths awarded satisfactory in good in one area good in two
Under the four main head- to each centre and then any 30 all three areas satisfactory in one good in all three areas excellent in two areas
ings the British Council reports needs for improvement are
on 14 categories – or 15 for subtracted. On ELgo the scores 20
good in two areas
satisfactory in two
excellent in one area
schools enrolling under-18s. are then divided by the number
Three levels of judgement are of strengths available, nor- 10
excellent in all three areas
given for each category: the mally 14 or 15, and expressed
schools can meet the standard as a star score of between one 0 W -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
of the scheme in this area, it and five. In order to represent Number of strengths in most recent British Council inspection (W=withdrawn, negative=need for improvement)
may be awarded a strength them in the graphs in this sec-
or the inspectors many note a tion, however, we have used a
need for improvement. Each 15-point scale.
strength or need for improve- By analysing the overall
ment is noted in the summary scores, it is possible to show Why the British Council?
statements issued by the Coun- not only the distribution of The British Council (BC) is the biggest inspection scheme for UK language centres; it covers 570 language centres.
cil, a pdf of which can be scores across the whole of the The Independents Schools Inspectorate (ISI) inspects 105 language schools, and the Association of British Lan-
found at www.britishcouncil. accredited schools but also the guage Schools (ABLS) just nineteen. Only the BC scheme cover all sectors: private language schools, universities,
org/education/accreditation/ variation in profile between dif- state colleges, etc. Its scoring system discriminates more exactly among the top centres – only one BC centre has a
information-students-agents/ ferent sectors of the UK English perfect score, compared to 55 per cent of all schools inspected by the ISI (see graph).
accreditation-inspections. language industry. n

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