A HIGHER education report on Wiltshire College has highlighted that the quality of its student learning opportunities requires improvement to meet UK expectations.

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) published a report on standards and quality at the college following its review in December.

The areas to work on include ensuring that website information is up-to-date, the virtual learning environment content is reviewed and updated and that external examiners' reports are consistently made available to all higher education students.

Principal of Wiltshire College Amanda Burnside said: “What is clear, if the report is read in full, is that the student learning experience is excellent at Wiltshire College and students should have no concerns over the quality or standards of their HE courses.”

“The judgements that the QAA use for the four areas they judge are ‘meets’ UK expectations, ‘requires improvement’ to meet UK expectations or ‘does not meet’ UK expectations. The college achieved three out of four 'meets UK expectations' and one 'requires improvement'.

The college now works with the QAA on an action plan to address the very minor issues that will enable the 'requires improvement' judgement to become 'meets UK expectation', and we are fully confident that this will be done within a few months.”

Despite saying there was room for improvement, the report did find that the academic standards of the awards it offers on behalf of degree-awarding bodies and other awarding organisations, the quality of the information about its learning opportunities and the enhancement of its student learning opportunities met UK expectations.

QAA's higher education reviews are carried out by experts from other universities and colleges. Every review team includes a student reviewer, because QAA believes that students should be partners in the quality assurance of their education.

The review team comprised Dr Wendy Gill (University of St Mark and St John), Patricia Millner (independent reviewer), Dr Karen Willis (University of Chester) and Scott Thomas (student reviewer, University of Newcastle upon Tyne).