THE Welsh education inspectorate has ruled that areas of Torfaen Training, the council’s vocational training provider, requires urgent improvement.

Inspectors from Estyn visited the Cwmbran-based centre in January before the publication of the findings – four of which were deemed as requiring a review.

The area which were of the most pressing concern to the watchdog were ‘care, support and guidance’ and ‘leadership and management’, with both receiving ratings of unsatisfactory.

‘Standards’ and ‘teaching and learning experiences’ were perceived to be adequate while the only area to receive a good rating was ‘wellbeing and attitudes to learning’.

David Congreve, Torfaen’s assistant chief executive for communities said: “Torfaen Training has a strong pedigree of delivering good results for work based learning so we are disappointed with some of the judgements, at this point in time.

“Amongst other significant challenges, we have had to deal with the legacy of managing an additional 600 plus learners, who we took on following difficulties elsewhere.

“In terms of safeguarding learners’ wellbeing, this report will be helpful in stepping up our management of sub-contracted training providers and that too will help drive up performance.

“The new centre manager has been supported to draw up an action plan, which will address all of Estyn’s recommendations and this will stretch learners to fully achieve their potential.”

The report highlights that the majority of learners make appropriate progress towards completing their training programmes and qualifications.

On and off-the-job learners make appropriate progress in developing their knowledge, understanding and skills and most learners are confident, enthusiastic and positively engaged in their training programmes.

Nearly all learners feel safe in their workplace and when undertaking off-the-job training and most feel that their provider works well to keep them safe.

However, the inspection also judged that more recently, too many learners made slower progress towards completing their apprenticeships and Estyn found that the quality of teaching, training and assessment has sometimes been too variable.

Inspectors added that previous concerns from Estyn were still outstanding and remained as areas of improvement for the management team to work on.

“Key recommendations from the last inspection report have not been addressed and are still current areas for improvement,” read the report.

Estyn will review the provider’s progress in the summer of 2017, before a re-inspection of Torfaen Training will take place at some time between 12 to 18 months after the inspectorate re-visits the centre.