Maidenhead & Windsor

Local people who take part in the Maidenhead Royal Borough's adult and community learning programmes are benefiting from a good service – and one that is well poised to develop even further in the future.

That's the view of a team of three inspectors from the Adult Learning Inspectorate who spent five days in the borough late last year, interviewing both learners and staff and visiting various places where learning projects are held in the community. They also interviewed the borough's partner providers – East Berkshire College, BCA (Berkshire College of Agriculture) and Charters School, Sunningdale.

Their newly-published report says the overall effectiveness of local provision is good and there are bouquets too for the quality of leadership and management and also for the measures in place to secure equality and diversity.

The inspectors found that:

* Maidenhead community learning is well-managed, with particularly effective support for learners, good teaching and learning and good development of skills
* family learning offers good development of parenting and personal skills, good teaching and learning and good support for learners
* leadership and management offers good support for tutors, effective action to identify and provide training for targeted communities, particularly good partnership working and good support for community providers.

Cllr Cynthia Pitteway, lead member for Maidenhead education and lifelong learning, said she was pleased with the inspectors' conclusions and proud of the achievements of a service that the lead inspector described as 'punching above its weight in the delivery of high quality learning provision',

She said: "A key strength is its ability to identify the need for and provide targeted services for particular sections of our community, for example people from ethnic minority communities. This widening of participation and outreach provision has attracted very positive comment from the inspection team.

"The inspectors also said that our partnership working came out loud and strong I am delighted that they recognised recognise our strong partnership working with providers of adult education and other partners. I would like to thank them for their unstinting support."

The report identifies a number of areas where the Maidenhead service can continue to make improvements, including the further development of literacy, numeracy and language provision and improving publicity about the service to ensure as many people as possible are aware of the learning opportunities available. These are already being addressed in the action plan following the inspection.

The borough's overall grades were:

* Leadership and management 2 (good)
* Preparation for life and work 2 (good)
* Family learning 3 (satisfactory).

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead