How Bud made an Ofsted inspection stress-free for Skern Training and Skills

Skern Training and Skills (STS) has provided apprenticeships since 2021 and have been using Bud from the start of their journey.

How Bud made an Ofsted inspection stress-free for
Skern Training and Skills

Following a monitoring visit in 2022, STS were expecting their full Ofsted inspection within 18 months to follow up on the recommendations they had received. 

We caught up with Steve Randles, Head of Education and Quality at STS, to hear about his preparations for a full inspection and how the team worked together to demonstrate high-quality training to Ofsted.

Building a brand around quality

Quality has always been at the heart of STS’s philosophy. “We’ve been building our brand based around quality and the culture of people. That’s been an absolute driver for the business moving forward – to make sure that we don’t lose quality as we grow,” Steve said.

Bud has been central to this culture, enabling STS to see areas for improvement in real time, be proactive in responding and demonstrate their efforts to Ofsted inspectors.

“The operations dashboard has been a huge driver of quality for us. I keep telling the team that the screen needs to be green. It’s okay to be red, but we need to know why it’s red, so we can have that justification,” Steve said.

Creating a team approach

Knowing that a full inspection was on the horizon, the STS team felt confident in their preparation and were ready for Ofsted when they received the notification.

“We genuinely did invite them in with open arms. It was a challenge, and there were definitely challenging conversations, but inviting them in to look at all the quality work we’ve been doing over the last 18 months was really important to us,” Steve said.

Steve also emphasised that STS’s team-wide approach helped them to succeed. “We were able to pass [this inspection] out to the relevant people because all our people have come on that journey. So it wasn’t just me sitting in the room, it was me saying ‘you need to speak to so-and-so about that, because they're the expert’.”

This whole-team plan was compounded by the Ofsted inspectors’ inclusive approach to the inspection. “The support they gave us was really good, like we were all part of the Ofsted team. It wasn’t them and us, it was ‘we all want to drive this forward, we’re just after some evidence’,” Steve explained.

Steve recalled that Ofsted were specifically interested in information, advice and guidance (IAG) and onboarding processes. He said: “They were very focused on progress reviews, and quality of work and the impact for the learners.”

A lot of the inspection focused on safeguarding, which was a challenge but enabled STS to provide evidence of the improvements they’d been working hard to make. 

“Safeguarding is such a vital grade that can make or break so quickly. Coming out of the monitoring visit, we have done a lot of work around our safeguarding, clarifying processes and making sure they are robust,” Steve said. 

Accessing evidence easily in Bud

The Ofsted inspectors who visited STS had used Bud before, and Steve shared a useful tip for other providers approaching an inspection.

“My top tip for others is to create accounts using the inspectors’ names but with a company email address. Otherwise, Bud recognises the inspectors’ emails as being registered elsewhere from other inspections, and doesn’t give them full access,” he said.

Having all of their evidence in one place was something that STS had also found incredibly helpful with previous Ofsted visits. 

“It’s straightforward to get that evidence collated amongst the team through Bud. Having all the information at hand in one place is the key element – to be able to pinpoint and not have to go through spreadsheet upon spreadsheet or into a filing system,” Steve explained.

“We always wanted to have an open door policy through Bud. Not one piece of evidence did I give them and feel worried about – it was all there. And that’s another driver of quality for us: that they can see everything the training specialists do.” 

Get invaluable business insights with Bud’s platform

Want to go into your next Ofsted inspection with confidence? Bud streamlines apprenticeship delivery, making it easy to access all the evidence you’ll need for inspections and compliance. 

Our dashboards draw on hundreds of data points from each learner, giving you real-time insight into performance. Start making data-driven decisions and delivering consistently high-quality programmes with Bud – book a discovery call.