“Access, engagement and assessment” have been the main challenges for colleges delivering teaching online, Ofsted has said.

The inspectorate carried out a review of online education in FE following the coronavirus lockdown, and published a blog on its findings today.

Speaking to Tes, Ofsted’s deputy director for further education and skills, Paul Joyce, stressed the review “was not an inspection”. He said that the findings would help to inform inspectors’ approach as they begin to visit colleges in September, when they will be considering curriculum planning and delivery – both face-to-face and online.

For the review, inspectors visited 20 colleges and providers remotely – all of them institutions that had volunteered to be involved. They spoke to learners, managers and teaching staff, and observed online lessons, sessions and other interactions.

“The message we take from this is that although the sector reacted very well, there are still a number of challenges that need to be thought about around access, engagement and assessment," said Mr Joyce. He said staff development was another area that colleges should consider.

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In his blog, Mr Joyce explained that learners’ experiences had varied considerably during the period of lockdown, “both across the range of providers and across subject areas in the same provider”. “For example, the level of face-to-face contact through video conferencing can vary considerably even between subject areas at the same provider," he wrote.

He said the review had shown colleges and providers had made “considerable efforts to support learners in accessing online education, but the lack of suitable technology or connectivity at home remains a problem for a significant minority of learners”.

“While colleges and providers have striven to make sure that learners have the means to learn online, some learners had limited or no access to a device and/or internet at home, meaning they had difficulty in doing their work.”

Engagement was also a challenge, according to Ofsted. Learners at levels 1 and 2 have engaged less well than those at level 3, Ofsted found, with those at levels 1 and 2 often finding it harder to engage with the technology necessary for online learning. Courses with a bigger practical component were also more challenging, said the inspectorate.

“Just because someone has logged on or is even looking at the screen, it doesn’t mean they are engaging with the material,” Russell Jordan, the senior HMI for FE and skills who led the review, said. He added that learners had told his team they were missing the engagement with peers in the classroom and did not feel that could be replaced by online delivery.

And in his blog today, Paul Joyce said: “Some attempts at online teaching result in learners becoming disengaged. In the weaker cases, teachers just read through their slide presentations and other resources verbatim, without adding any commentary, which meant that some learners lost interest.”

Learners preferred “live” online lessons, he added, and engagement was higher when live online lessons are available and remote learning is more interactive. Ofsted said teachers did not always use online teaching sessions effectively to check on and develop learning.

“For example, tutors often use online chat functions to replace what would ordinarily be a group discussion. Although this is responsive to some learners’ preferences, it slows down the pace of the session. It also makes it difficult for learners to produce detailed answers to questions and means that some learners contribute little to discussions. Learners who do make use of voice channels during sessions benefit from the ability to talk through challenging questions in more detail and receive instant explanations from their teachers.”

According to Mr Joyce, “the varying competence and confidence of staff with information technology has affected providers’ success in making the transition to online learning. Staff training has been crucial. The extent to which staff in subject areas had engaged with and developed approaches to online and remote learning in advance of Covid-19 affected progress during lockdown. The progress that needed to be made in any given provider varied significantly across subject areas.”

And Mr Jordan told Tes: “Those providers that were really well prepared took Covid in their stride.”

Mr Joyce said while the inspectorate’s review had been small, it was clear there was “a lot to learn from how the [further education and skills] sector has approached remote learning in these unusual times”.

“While there’s a degree of variability, which is to be expected, I’ve been impressed by the determination and tenacity of leaders in the sector and at what they’ve managed to achieve for learners," he added. "I hope these insights prove useful as the sector focuses on making September a success.”