USP College are proud to announce that after a recent Ofsted inspection, the College has been rated Good overall with areas rated Strong and Outstanding.
USP College, which has three campuses across Essex in Benfleet, Grays and Canvey Island is known for its career focused approach to learning and giving students the best preparation for their next steps after college life. The College opened its XTEND Digital Campus in 2021 and was the first of its kind in the UK, since the College has invested in technology and state-of-the-art study spaces across all campuses, including Hospital Simulation Suites, Mega Science Labs and Motion Capture Studios. The fantastic facilities coupled with the use of VR technology and immersive classrooms gives students the technical, digital and transferable skills they need to kick-start their future careers.
The College was graded Outstanding for the area of Personal Development. This has been a key focus of the College as it continues to build strong partnerships with businesses and employers, to offer students work experience, live project work briefs and 3 CPD days per academic year.
The report stated:
‘Students benefit from the involvement of employers and other stakeholders in the design of courses. This involvement ensures that course content is relevant and up to date. Employers also provide live briefs and masterclasses for students that help to bring topics to life.’
There was high praise for the general culture of the College:
‘There is a positive and professional culture at the college... Students are polite, helpful and welcoming and as a result, the college is an inclusive, supportive and friendly place.’
‘Students feel safe at the college. They know to whom they should report concerns and are confident that staff will respond quickly and appropriately if they do so.’
And a special mention for the strong leadership and management team:
‘Leaders and managers have high expectations for the quality of education offered by the college. Through a range of suitable processes, they ensure that teaching is consistently good.’
This inspection closely followed our previous inspection in 2021 due to the new framework released by Ofsted. We are continuing to make progress and are proud to still be rated good with outstanding features in Personal Development and Strong in Contribution to Skills.
The strong contribution to skills is something that we are particularly proud of, our staff work incredibly hard to ensure our engagement with employers, universities, apprenticeship providers and wider stakeholders to ensure our students develop the relevant skills and experience.
Dan, who has supported the College on its journey to an Ofsted Rated Good Provider said:
The on-going hard work of our staff has meant we have been able to maintain a good standard of education over the years. It is especially great to see this highlighted within the report to recognise the continuous efforts of our staff and leadership team.
Our students are also a testament to the College and this was highly praised within the report with one of my favourite lines being, ‘They are encouraged to experiment and helped to worry less about failure. As a result, students become more resilient and aspirational.'.
The College offers a broad range of courses including A-Levels, Vocational Courses, T-Levels, Foundation Learning, Adult Courses and Higher Education.