Safe Opportunities

Overview

This monitoring visit assessed Safe Opportunities, an independent specialist college supporting students aged 14 to 16 and post-16 learners with education, health and care plans. The report concludes that leaders and managers have made “reasonable progress” in designing tailored learning programmes, ensuring high-quality education, and implementing effective safeguarding arrangements.

Strengths

• Leaders have developed “effective and individualised curriculums” including the Step-16 course and supported internships to help students overcome “considerable educational barriers.”
• Staff are “suitably qualified and experienced,” benefiting from training that helps them adapt teaching for students affected by “childhood trauma.”
• Students “gain confidence and improve their social and communication skills significantly” through sensitive, individualised approaches.
• Leaders work closely with employers to secure “meaningful and useful” placements, helping students access government grants for paid employment.
• Students report feeling safe in college and appreciate the “calm and safe environments” created for learning.

Areas to improve

• Some students begin supported internships before fully developing necessary skills, which “impacts on their attendance and achievement.”
• The “personal development curriculum” and quality processes, such as recording progress and target setting, “require development.”
• A minority of targets are “too broad” and do not always include specific work-related goals needed for the workplace.

Safeguarding

Leaders “prioritise safeguarding across their provision,” ensuring appropriate policies are in place and staff receive frequent training, though students are “less confident to discuss the risks they may face where they live or learn.”