Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement with Lou Doyle

Mark Simpkins (00:03.909)
Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Effie Gold, your source for real talk and real solutions in the world of further education. And I am of course your host, Mark Simpkins, here to bring insights that will hopefully take your provision to the next level. Now firstly, for those listening on audio, I apologize for the croaky voice. Yes, I have a sore throat. Yes, I’m suffering a little bit.

And for those that are watching on video, yes, you’ll notice I have a different background. I’m in a different house today because internet kind of failed me in my house. So yes, you’ll see a couple of differences, but hopefully that won’t curb any of your enjoyment of this particular pod. And today Effie Gold is.

delighted to welcome Lou Doyle to the FE Gold Studio. Lou is CEO of Mesmer and also Governor, Board Advisor, Non -Exec for FE providers, as well as, of course, the founder of the Quality Professional Awards for FE and employability. That is quite a mouthful, Lou. How are you doing today? Are you better than me?

Lou Doyle (01:15.544)
I am better than you. I haven’t got, I’m not going to say you’ve got man flu because we’ve obviously spoken up already and I know you are genuinely suffering for your art. Suffering for your art today, Mark, that’s what you do. You did a marvellous job of introducing me and I might take you everywhere with me to do it. Because it’s better than I ever do. So thank you for that.

Mark Simpkins (01:25.283)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Mark Simpkins (01:34.946)
Hahaha

That’s all right, thank you very much. Before we dive into today’s topic, Lou, do want to tell us a little bit about you, Mesmer, and maybe just an overview of the other work that you do?

Lou Doyle (01:48.63)
Yeah, official.

Yeah, I mean, you you did a thank you for the introduction because I think that that covers quite, you know, the broad remit that many of us occupy. It’s not just me, you who work in this space. But I guess what I would probably say is, is that my life pre -FE, you know, in my lead up to coming into FE, because we’ve all got a pre -FE life for most of us, haven’t we? Was in the corporate space. So worked for Shareways. I worked for Orange Telecom, now EE. And that kind of took me on an adventure through

operational leadership, not to a pretty senior level, and then into change management. So I’m rooted in a change management and change leadership space. And therefore, when I did what I really wanted to do, which is move into FE, there wasn’t actually that big a leap to then, so therefore, how does that interact with the idea of quality assurance and quality improvement? So that’s where I come from, I guess what, you know, floats my boat and makes me tick.

I love the FE sector and employability very much. feel like we have a corner to fight and it’s a really important corner to fight. And I think lots of us, you know, work very hard to do that well. Mesmer came out, me and my business partner, Carol, came about because she was a director with an ITP, an independent training provider. And she was one of my clients in my other business that I’ve got. she was…

riching about how hard it was to be able to manage quality assurance, too much data, too much admin, that was 15 years ago and I think we’d say the same thing now. And was there an easier and better way of doing it? And Mesmer was born out of that conversation. So we’ve got some fabulous partnerships across the sectors. We are delighted to be the founders of the Quality Professionals Awards with the intention really of celebrating.

Mark Simpkins (03:25.434)
Yeah.

Lou Doyle (03:42.488)
and creating the careers path for quality and compliance people in a space that I know you care very much about too. So yeah, that’s kind of me and where I fit.

Mark Simpkins (03:52.577)
Yeah, absolutely. And I’d love seeing all the photos about that event, obviously from this year. So if you haven’t caught them, yeah, absolutely.

Lou Doyle (03:57.656)
You have to come next year. It’s not acceptable not to be there. you have to come next year. It was great fun and genuinely we didn’t know how it would work out actually. We couldn’t have asked for more but a genuine sense of everyone celebrating each other. You we often said on social as you know that it was about being each other’s best cheerleaders.

and everyone who came absolutely stepped into that space and that role. And really lovely, I have to say to see some providers who you don’t see in some of the other fantastic awards we have, like local authorities, coming absolutely to the forefront of that. So very exciting and delightful for it to be UK wide as well. So it wasn’t just in England. So yeah, I’m looking forward to next year.

Mark Simpkins (04:48.717)
Yeah, that was great. And if you haven’t caught those photos, you can pick them up obviously and see them on LinkedIn. Yeah, it looked like a fantastic event and I’ll hold you to that, I’ll definitely be there next year.

Lou Doyle (04:54.297)
yeah. Yeah.

Lou Doyle (04:58.892)
Yeah, get some of it.

Mark Simpkins (05:00.365)
Yeah. So it is that time of the year when FE organizations will be turning their attention to what will be for some, guess, the annual mammoth task of creating their self -assessment report and their quality improvement plans. what I want to do, I guess, maybe we should start with that right at the start, Lou, before we kind of go into much. So those people out there who are thinking, you know, maybe self -assessment, quality improvement, what’s that and how are they linked exactly?

exactly.

Lou Doyle (05:30.39)
Yeah, yeah, actually, that’s a really good question because we make assumptions, don’t we, that everyone sort of knows what it is. You know, so I think if you if we talk about it in education terms, and then I think as we go through the conversation, we’ll unpick that bit more. But in the education world, there is a depending on whether you’re in schools, whether you’re in college, in FE, whether you’re in HE, kind of non -apprenticeships, the process exists, it’s just called something slightly different in all of them.

Mark Simpkins (05:34.553)
Yeah.

Lou Doyle (05:57.208)
And in FE, we tend to refer to it the self -assessment process or the SAR process. And the interesting tug of love that it kind of has, and I know you will ask me about this, is around how much of that is driven by the regulator says you’ve got to do it, so therefore you must do it, and how much of it is driven in the spirit of true quality assurance improvement, which is reflective practice underpins, or one is a key underpinning pillar.

Mark Simpkins (06:09.529)
and

Lou Doyle (06:26.196)
of how we develop and grow both as people and as organisations. And I think, you we’re always going to be caught in between those pillars and we try and make that easier for people to navigate that. so the SAR process, if you like, sits in a standard quality improvement cycle. It’s a way of reflecting on what’s happened over a given period. It links into a quality improvement plan, which is what you’re going to do next.

So the SA is reflective, it looks backwards, your QUIP looks forwards.

Mark Simpkins (06:57.295)
Great. I love it. Brilliant. Just summing that up perfectly. like I say, it’s something I wanted to ask because like you said, the assumption that people know and it’s not, they don’t know, or they’ve either been in different providers or they’ve been in a provider and it’s been done one way and that they haven’t necessarily been seen how things can be done differently, which is where I kind of want to go to next because we’ve been in this business, been in this sector for a long time. So how have you seen, I guess,

Lou Doyle (07:08.012)
Yeah, and they don’t always.

Mark Simpkins (07:27.257)
the approach to self -assessment, particularly in further education, evolve over recent years.

Lou Doyle (07:35.032)
Yeah, so I think if I take a kind of data point, so you know that every year along with our partners at SDN, we do a big webinar, there’s always 500 plus people on it, even more that listen to it afterwards. And it’s a bit of a love one, isn’t it? We have a really good time, which is quite bizarre on webinars about just chewing the fat and sharing ideas. And that’s hard when there’s a lot of people. But we’ve built up a bit of a community around that. And what was quite interesting this year was,

Mark Simpkins (07:49.338)
You

Mark Simpkins (07:56.046)
Yeah.

Lou Doyle (08:04.784)
We ask a question every year in that webinar, is one of them is if Ofster didn’t require you or regulator, because some of them come from outside of England, didn’t require you to self assess, would you still do it? And what we’ve noticed is the percentage that say they still would is increasing year on year. Yep. So it’s more that would say, yes, we would still do it than say that they wouldn’t do it. And I think that’s a really important evolution of mindset.

around actually we’re not just doing it for them, you as in the regulator, we’re really thinking about the value this adds to our organization in terms of growth, helping CPD, you know, it’s a source of CPD, helping people to really think through and celebrate what it is that they go about doing. So I think that in itself is really important to kind of latch on to. In terms of evolution, it depends on the type of provider. So

If you were to take a university that stepped into an apprenticeship space, their evolution has been an absolute joy to be part of because you’ve got a bit of a cultural clash between the way that they go about self -assessing in their degree provision, so their traditional direct entry, in comparison to the way that they start to self -assess around apprenticeships. So their evolution has been, for example, one thing within that is it’s okay to say you’re not good at something.

And actually, interestingly with HE, I think they found that a little bit more challenging to feel comfortable engaging with. So that’s one example. I think in colleges, the process is pretty well entrenched in colleges that whether it’s done well is always a question. So we’re not saying all colleges do well because that’s not the case. But the process of it is there. What I’ve certainly seen through the work that I do with colleges is

Mark Simpkins (09:46.255)
Yeah.

Lou Doyle (09:57.046)
that willingness and openness to continue to open their doors to external scrutiny of that. So I sit on the scrutiny boards of a number of colleges in the same way I do with ITPs in the same way that I do with universities. But I’ve also started them, seen them starting to bring employers into that space or perhaps having a learner on their scrutiny panel. So I think there’s some elements of that. With the ITPs, the evolution is in process and

Also, we’ve got lots more newer ITPs because we’re still really getting people through their first cycles of off -stead inspection, are a little bit cynical in some cases about what is the point of this. So I think that’s understandable because perhaps they’re so new to education, they don’t quite get it. And that’s not a problem. That’s just about supporting those guys to help them think it through in a different way. And the only other thing I’ll say about evolution is

I am thoroughly encouraged by how many providers recognize it is an opportunity to celebrate things, not just about saying what’s a bit rubbish. And I think we’ve got into a little bit of a habit of either self -assessment being, we’ll talk about this, I’m sure, you know, a bit of a, we’ll just say what we do and that’s enough. And we’re definitely moving beyond that to then being a, it’s just about saying about what’s everything is wrong.

to actually saying there are things that we need to celebrate because if we celebrate them, we can think about how we capacity build them and look at how that good practice can be transferred into other areas in our organization, in our subcontractor base, in our regional network that we’re involved in. So that for me is really good to see.

Mark Simpkins (11:44.899)
Yeah, that’s great. mean, just to kind of go back to your point about the, you know, would they continue still to do self -sensibility if also were involved. Mike.

kind of sub question with that is obviously the people who come to that webinar, they are, I’m assuming, and this is assumptions, and maybe tell me if it’s wrong that these, are quality professionals. They are people who are obviously involved already in that self assessment cycle. and so therefore, cause they are invested perhaps in self assessment and quality improvement already, that may sway their response. Do you think that would be different if it was take those quality professionals out?

Lou Doyle (12:20.778)
Absolutely.

Mark Simpkins (12:26.381)
and then just either have the leaders or the remainder, the business services, whatever it is, is in the business there. Would they say the same thing, do you think?

Lou Doyle (12:34.488)
Yeah, there’s a really good challenge actually. I think on that, taking that event as just a data point, we get a mix, but I think you’re absolutely right. The very fact that they’re in the room says there is a degree of investment in the process. So I think you’re right. We would get more of a mixed response in that. Would we do it if not? What I always say about really good self assessment, why I’m…

geeky -ish about it, you know, as a change management person is. I don’t think there is a better process that allows you to hold a mirror up to the culture of your organization in the way that self -assessment does, because you’re holistically, whereas other bits of quality assurance, you know, kind of pick up on specific activities or methods or things, which then ultimately, you know, end up in your self -assessment, because it’s just a consolidation. That’s all it is. But it’s a really…

Mark Simpkins (13:03.492)
Yeah

Lou Doyle (13:31.48)
helpful mirror of what’s the way we do things around here. You know, so to use an example, if I were a leader, and I’ll maybe give you an example later on actually in the employability sector where there is no regulatory requirement to do it. And some of the work that we’ve done in the employability space being as a senior leadership team, if we look at the culture, our values, you know, some of those things we’ve probably gotten aboard somewhere or a laminate, there’ll be something in there about feedback and openness and honesty and all of those things.

Mark Simpkins (13:44.453)
Mm

Lou Doyle (14:01.256)
I can tell, as I’m sure you can, when I read a self -assessment, if that’s not the culture of that organisation. So I think your pushback is spot on. Therefore, the dialogue we have to have when we’re dealing with people who aren’t as invested in it is around how does this support you to grow and develop your organisation and to think through your really important objectives that aren’t always about the regulator and what you want to do and where you want to get your provider to be.

And how is this process giving you that opportunity to have that, I hate this phrase, but that golden thread throughout the organization of being able to really honestly and truly reflect on what you’re good at and what you’re not. And you can lift that whole thing out of the education sector and put it in any sector, know, put it in mine, because most of us, know, is part tech, you know, part consultancy as a business and still ask a different set of questions.

Mark Simpkins (14:50.552)
Yeah.

Lou Doyle (14:59.212)
But the principle of, we doing that reflection in order to think about what our business strategy looks like in the year ahead, still allows us to put a mirror up to the organization. you’re spot on, there’s still work to do in that space. I think the conversation has to shift to being, what do we get out of that as an organization? Not what we do in order just to keep the regulator happy. And particularly with perhaps some of the smaller ITPs, we’ve definitely…

got some of that because it seemed to be a regulatory process for them.

Mark Simpkins (15:33.687)
Yeah. And would you say then that, I guess, kind of disconnect and that engagement with senior leaders and other people, is that a common mistake you see kind of out there when it comes to this kind of self? And if so, are there others that you kind of spot and see and go, you know what, things need to change a little bit here?

Lou Doyle (15:53.528)
Yeah, there are common things and you picked up on a good one, which is, I think we put a list up every year in that webinar I mentioned, think nine or 10 of them, don’t we? These are the common mistakes, give us your top two or three. And usually in the top three, the one which is around lack of senior leader engagement will come up in there, all the time it appears. Because you’re right, if that ownership and accountability for the process…

Mark Simpkins (16:00.963)
Bye.

Mark Simpkins (16:05.68)
Yeah.

Mark Simpkins (16:13.583)
Yeah.

Lou Doyle (16:19.884)
doesn’t go to that senior leader level, you can absolutely understand why people more junior in the organization get into a bit of a, you know, kind of what’s the point, you know, mindset around that. And it’s the reason why things like scrutiny boards and panels work so well, because they allow perhaps a more junior team to present their department, if you like, you know, look at what we’ve done this year, or look at the things we need help with, or look at the things that we’re lacking resources in and the impact that that’s having on learners.

And lifting that off a page, because I think often it is still on a page or in our case on a text screen, how we get them to have that dialogue has to be part of the process of self -assessment, not seeing it the hour. We often see it as a report rather than actually the process of how it happens. So it absolutely does come up. It’s usually in the top three. The other really common ones to give you some quick ones would be there’s still in some cases far too long and far too fluffy.

Mark Simpkins (17:02.969)
Yep.

Lou Doyle (17:17.844)
So it becomes this kind of meandering noise explaining what we do and that, you know, age old thing we say of the so what. So if we can’t see what the impact of that is, then what’s the point of you doing it or what’s the point of you writing about it? So some of them are still too long and that is in itself an admin burden. So therefore how do we help people to, you know, reduce that so they use their time in a different way?

We see a complete disjoint sometimes between the self assessment report and the quality improvement plan. So you wouldn’t even know they were from the same organisation sometimes and that comes up. And in the quality improvement plan, it becomes a bloody great big to do list instead of what we always say to people, I’m sure you do too, is if you’ve got more than 10 things on it, you haven’t gone through the exercise of prioritising well enough. And actually the fight should be about

Mark Simpkins (17:50.597)
Yep.

Mark Simpkins (18:09.093)
Yeah.

Lou Doyle (18:11.52)
If we can only do five things next year, because of the limited time and effort that we can put into this, which are the five things? Which will the things that will make the most difference? So that would be the other one that I would, you know, pull out. it just that piece around it being truly evaluative, you know, it not being a statement of fact, but a statement of whether or not it did anything, you know, of any use. So those are the ones I would say underneath that is a

a common mistake of not seeing it as a process and not planning it on the basis of that process in order that you haven’t got one person kind of squirreled away in a room in the dark, you know, for two weeks. He was writing something that no one else cares about, you know, not bothered because they weren’t involved in the process.

Mark Simpkins (19:01.239)
Yeah, and that’s exactly where I’m going next, because I kind of, guess, made a joke of this right at the start of the pod to be able to say the mammoth annual task of completing the self -assessment report. And I think in terms of how can providers ensure that their self -assessment process is really truly, I guess, reflective and not just a tick, a box ticking exercise essentially that they do once a year.

Lou Doyle (19:11.67)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lou Doyle (19:30.092)
Yeah, yeah. One of the things we talk about most often, and I think this is, well, maybe we’ll talk about the ESF -A in a moment, but is if you took away the whole of the Ofsted framework, yeah, and we started on that basis, and funny enough, myself and Carol, my business partner, were doing this a bit yesterday in relation to a piece of work we’re doing. If you took all of that away and said to any organization,

one of the best questions you would use in order to determine whether or not you’ve got to where you’ve got to, that still comes back to the foundation of what are you reflecting against? And one of my favorite jobs that I get to do is when I’m working with a provider is literally that question of, so what are your key performance indicators? see your goals, I get a sense of who you are and what you stand for, but how have you translated those into

Mark Simpkins (20:06.608)
Mm

Lou Doyle (20:24.172)
performance indicators that we can then reflect against, that we can make some determination about not only did we achieve them, but how did we go about achieving them? And we’ve definitely still got a situation in FE, not everyone, of course not everyone, but in pockets whereby the expression of KPIs is, well, that’s what the ESFA says, because that’s what’s in the accountability framework. There was nothing ambitious about the ESFA indicators.

Mark Simpkins (20:48.581)
Yeah.

Lou Doyle (20:52.436)
And the reason why that is because the ESFA is a regulator. Their job is to manage against risk and minimum standards. And minimum standards are not ambitious. That’s two completely different things. know, and minimum standard might be an ambition for a provider that’s got themselves in a bit of trouble and they need to get up to that point. But for anyone who’s reaching that, needs to go beyond that. So, sorry, that was long answer to your question, which is…

Mark Simpkins (21:20.066)
Yeah

Lou Doyle (21:20.32)
You’ve got to start with your own key performance indicators and what you stand for as an organization in order to then form the basis of what is it that we want people to look at and reflect on and think about the quality of what it is that they’re achieving. And secondary to that is how you then use the framework in the Ofsted case to your advantage to allow you to take a line of questioning that helps you to unpick that in more detail.

So I think that for me would be the number one around moving it from something that’s box ticking to something that’s a bit more interesting than that. The second one would be that piece around senior leaders, that this isn’t about how you engage them at the 11th hour. It’s thinking this year about next year’s self -assessment. So when we get to next year, where is it, for example, in a senior leadership meeting that they sign off the self -assessment that comes out of it?

How is it that you got the involvement of the staff up to that point that you then know that you as a quality person are essentially representing the team in saying to senior leaders, we need your help with this because this is not going to get any better unless you give us more resource or more money or more time or whatever it might be in order to drive the provision forward. So you would expect to see the sign off process sit at that level. The only other one I would add to that.

because again, I know it’ll come up by the things later on, is around thinking about your self assessment. If you’ve got multiple departments in using it as a limiting grade has a really interesting outcome of sharpening the focus of senior leaders somewhat. So if, for example, you’re in a big college and you’ve got engineering provision over here, that’s full time and you’ve got apprenticeships over here.

and your apprenticeship people use the engineering people to deliver these sessions, but the apprenticeship provision isn’t very good, then the engineering provision shouldn’t be able to get a SAGRADE, assuming you grade it, higher than the one that sits in apprenticeships. Because it allows you to kind of push shared accountability in a way that if you didn’t have the self -assessment process, you wouldn’t. And if I were being incredibly manipulative about it, I have been known to say to people,

Lou Doyle (23:41.352)
at a middle management level, if you are not getting the support you need to build quality, the worst thing that you can do with self -assessment is drop into the bottom end of good. know, so again, we’re assuming we’re using the Ofsted grades. The worst place you can be is the bottom end of good because then you risk everyone going, well, it’s okay. You know, it’s fine. And before you know it, you do the exact opposite of what you know we preach, which is no surprise as when it comes to inspection that

Mark Simpkins (23:57.243)
sure.

Mark Simpkins (24:03.962)
Yeah.

Lou Doyle (24:11.18)
You’ve just skirted the line above it and the risk is massive. So if you’re dropping into the bottom end of good, grade your SARAs, it requires improvement. Because if you want senior leaders to listen to the issues that you need their help with, then pull the grade down, don’t pull the grade up. Because it will give you the voice that you need. And we’ve got some beautiful examples of how that happens. And actually I chair an academy where that happens.

you know, that’s now an outstanding academy, but was in special measures. And our ability to get those messages across actually, you know, was part of that journey of improvement, you know, along the way. The other thing I would say is that every provider should know if there is no better prediction of your off -stead grade, if that’s what floats your boat, and I understand why it does for everyone who works at FEH, you don’t want a bad off grade.

Mark Simpkins (25:03.131)
you

Lou Doyle (25:04.472)
it’s a pain. It’s much better to get good or better and then you just get on with your job. It is the single best predictor of your Ofsted grade. can come up with any old rubbish, you can bring me or you in, you can get anyone you want to do it, you can stick it through an algorithm, do whatever you want to do, but there is nothing that will predict your grade better than a robust self -assessment report. You are literally inspecting yourself before they turn up and there isn’t a single provider that we’ve worked with over the years, not one.

where if we get that process right, we know literally box by box what’s going to come out of inspection. Might be the odd wobble. Never, we never get the grade wrong. It’s not a dark art. And I think sometimes it can be perceived as that and we need to take that away. And some of that’s because the inspection regime has allowed that to happen. And I know in recent years they’ve tried to pull that apart, but there’s been some challenges of late, as we know around that and the big listens happening and so on and so forth.

But wherever there’s a regulator, there’ll always be to some extent a fear of the regulator. know, take the ownership back. Think about how you get to that point if you’re a provider listening to this, that your SAR is the best predictive re -inspection grade. And that to a senior leadership team and to your colleagues can be a really powerful message.

Mark Simpkins (26:20.963)
Yeah, that’s a great approach. mean, it’s interesting, I was going to go on to this a little bit now because I had the conversation in one of my other pods, I think it was with Acer when we were talking about systems and IT and how providers were looking at, when is the right time to be able to meet? I’m not happy with the one that we got, I want to move elsewhere, but I’m worried because Ofsted might come.

in between and it’s this balance between, you know, the need for innovation and change and then being the fear of what happens if they come kind of halfway through that transition and part of the advice I try to give them is that it’s not necessarily about even though you’ve got to consider that regulatory, you know,

Lou Doyle (27:00.14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark Simpkins (27:10.043)
approach of what will happen, but you’ve got to do what’s best for your business and best for your learners ultimately and your employers. so it’s that balance, right, between innovation.

Lou Doyle (27:13.996)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I know you sent me some notes actually before we were meeting up today just to give me an idea of what you want to talk through. And I really loved your question around that actually, you that balance of it was it was a really good reflective question for me, if you like around but how do you balance innovation and compliance?

Mark Simpkins (27:38.49)
Yeah.

Lou Doyle (27:40.048)
And I think what I drew on when I was thinking it through is if you look at some of the most innovative things that have happened in the past three or four years, quite a lot of that’s come as a result of COVID. So if I kind of put my change leadership hat on, can be really, people can buy into your.

your sense of vision or future innovation and go, God, that’s amazing. That’s a really good idea. And you think you’ve got people on board and then you walk away and you come back and they’re still doing what they were doing yesterday. And if you were taking, know, quite an academic theory model of change leadership, it’s very clear that, and it’s right in my experience, that you have to get people to buy into the, why should you not do what you kept doing yesterday before you get them to buy into the future state?

So what’s gonna happen if you keep doing what you’re gonna keep doing? And that’s why quite often innovation comes out of when we’re pushed out of that space. And that’s what COVID did. It forced us to behave and to operate in different ways. And innovation is a process, yeah? So I think that’s the first thing I guess to say off the back of that is, innovation is not a…

a state of mind, you know, necessarily, because I think people think it’s kind of this weird thing of osmosis. It’s a process that you go through in order to get a new product or service or equivalent to delivery. It’s a new solution to the same problem quite often that’s existed before. So why I mention that is when you look back at what happened with Covid, some of the most innovative things that came out of that were in some of the most heavily regulated sectors. So the vaccine rollout, you know, that happened.

Mark Simpkins (29:05.636)
you

Lou Doyle (29:28.758)
and how that springboarded other innovation within the space around malaria and so on and so forth. Far more heavily regulated than what we do, having to navigate so many challenges and getting things over the line, yet we saw differences in that. Some of the most fantastic tech innovation that you’re seeing at the moment is in the health sector, arguably far more heavily regulated in terms of the impact on people than it is within the education space.

There’s custom and practice around how you can balance those two things. And for me, you’re absolutely right in saying where regulation is a problem. And I think we can all buy into the fact that we need to be regulated. We might not all agree on how we should be regulated. But the bottom line is we have access to government money. And as a result of that, it is right that the taxpayer should feel that their money is being used and protected in the right way that does the best thing for the people who work in the lives of.

people who work in this country. So we might not agree on how, I think we probably agree on that we should. So therefore, that’s always going to be there. And if you took that approach of we can’t change because of the regulator, you’d never do anything. You we’d end up in this status quo of just treading water all the time.

Mark Simpkins (30:33.061)
Yeah.

Mark Simpkins (30:42.147)
No.

Lou Doyle (30:46.568)
And I can think of a provider who’s literally just come out of inspection, who’s partway through the rollout of a brand new portfolio solution. They removed the last one, it wasn’t working for them. They brought a new one in. It hasn’t in any way, or form impacted on the outcome of their inspection. But what they’ve been able to do is talk about why they’ve made that transition, why they’re making that happen. And I’m not underplaying why that makes people nervous because I understand that it does.

So I think practically it’s about in your organisation, have you got a process for innovation? know, looking at some, what does your design process look like? And we can share resources maybe with people after today, if they’d be interested in that. What does that process look like? How do we adopt that? How do things like quality assurance and self -assessment inform your process of innovation in the way that you want to make change? But as you say, not letting that be a barrier to do things differently and

dare I say even an excuse sometimes not to change, know, that we can’t do it because of, I think perhaps happens more than maybe we talk about. We hide behind a veil of compliance and regulation when it suits us sometimes, I think, you know, maybe we need a little bit of reflection around that within our organizations. And I apply that to my own as well, actually.

Mark Simpkins (31:48.601)
Hmm. Yeah.

Mark Simpkins (32:02.422)
Hahaha

Mark Simpkins (32:12.875)
Yeah, I think you’re right. I you’re right. I’m just looking at the time here, Lou. I know we’re kind of pressing on it. What I want to do is I kind of to kind of start to wrap this up is that there will be people out there who will listen to this podcast and go, okay, all of that sounds great. Okay, and I get it. And I understand what you’re talking about. But in the here and now, okay, I now need to start to think about and I need to, know, Eva, you know, it’s a brand new…

you know, quality manager or head of quality that’s in a in a provider that’s thinking, my god, that, you know, that the self assessment report is my responsibility. And I wasn’t here for last academic year, but it’s, it’s, it’s on my shoulders. Where do I start? What do I do? How am I going to get how am going to do this? So what would be great is just the, know, as a kind of final question, think this is what’s your advice to, to somebody that may be in that position, they’re going, what can I do over the next month?

two months that’s going to get me to a place where I’m happy with our self assessment.

Lou Doyle (33:10.044)
Yeah. Yeah, I think the first thing is I would I would be setting my stall out as a new head of quality because I can do that if that’s the role that I’ve got. And so as this is about reflective practice and we know from the way we teach and we support people to learn that reflective practice is part of the way that we grow. And I brought up that the definition I really like is one from Linda Finley in 2008 and she refers to as

Mark Simpkins (33:17.499)
Mm -hmm.

Lou Doyle (33:36.704)
learning through and from experience towards gaining new insights of self and practice. Yeah. So, so learn from experience, gain insights, examine assumptions, you know, it’s there for you to challenge assumptions. It’s there for you to critically evaluate what you do. It’s there for you to innovate and think about how you go forward. So set the stall out for, this is what we did last year. And actually what’s going to happen if we did what we did last year.

So we didn’t make the changes we wanted. We haven’t grown in the way we hope to. People don’t feel like they’ve got the CPD, whatever it might be. And then lay out that foundation of this is about reflective practice and these are the key things. There’s lots of resources around that that we want to get out of it. So as a new head of quality, that’s what I’m about. And that’s the foundation of how we’re going to do this. And the self assessment process, we will scaffold your reflective learning through the self assessment process.

So if you are a head of quality who wants to involve perhaps, know, curriculum leaders or team leaders in the process with their team, my first piece of advice is don’t make them self -assess against the full education inspection framework. It’s overwhelming and it’s unnecessary. That’s your job to worry about that as a head of quality. Give them a much narrower version of that. So in the Mesmer platform, for example, we have clients who have a much more simplified version of that that they use.

and they use that to pull in people’s ideas and thoughts and reflections without getting bogged down in education language and Ofsted language. So simplify it to allow people to get a foot in the door with the process in an easier way than just chucking the eef out to everyone in a form and saying we’ve all got to do this. In a bigger college, for example, you can do that differently and lots of them do use the full eef for good reason because they’re much more affair with the process.

So that would be my number one. The second thing I would do is then is put the scrutiny panel in place. So allow your curriculum teams, even if you’re a really small provider, you’re still going to have curriculum teams, even if it’s one curriculum area, let that team present back to you and a senior leader their findings of their own thing. What did we think we were good at? What did we think we weren’t? What do you need from us in order for us to get better? So that they know that their voice is being heard within that process.

Mark Simpkins (35:42.061)
Yep. Yep.

Lou Doyle (36:00.216)
And even if what’s written down is a bit rubbish, it’s nearly irrelevant because you’re taking the value of the process through the conversation that takes place. So when head of quality is then getting to that point of writing a report and if it’s more than 10 pages long, it’s too long. So keep it as concise as you can. Yes, use the Ofsted framework. We hardly know anyone who doesn’t. Yes, use the Ofsted framework in order to guide your thinking and what you’re writing.

Mark Simpkins (36:16.793)
Yep.

Lou Doyle (36:28.022)
but don’t think you’ve got a right, you know, war and peace around it. And then bring people back into the process to do the prioritization. We’re only going to do five things next year that are going to make the biggest difference for our learners and for our staff. What are the big five and fight them out between you because that’s the value of the process and link them directly to your KPIs and your goals for your organization. So the thread from your KPIs, your goals through to that process is absolutely crucial.

to get it right and make a difference to it. And don’t feel like you have to grade it if you don’t want to. Some don’t.

Mark Simpkins (37:04.295)
Yeah. Well, that’s great. Thank you. I’m sure there’s some people who just listen to the pod and just go, right, that’s great. That’s my starting point. That’s where I’m going to go. So, we were able to have this conversation. We could have gone on for longer, but the point of these pods is to try and keep them quite short and snappy. So maybe you’ll allow us to come back at another time and pick out something else. Thank you.

Lou Doyle (37:11.608)
Good.

Lou Doyle (37:26.112)
Of course I will. And you’ll be rid of your man flu, you’ll be feeling better and of course we will, anytime. And thank you for having me, it’s lovely seeing you.

Mark Simpkins (37:36.864)
Thank you, you too. So that’s a wrap for today’s edition of FE Gold. I hope you enjoyed it. Please do. If you’ve enjoyed the show, tell your connections, tell your friends, colleagues, and that will help it grow. Luke, if anybody was interested in Mesmer or wanted to get in touch with you, how would they do that? What’s the best way to do that?

Lou Doyle (37:55.64)
They can do that in one or a few ways. They do it through you, of course, if they want to do that. Or they can get in touch with us at mesmer .co .uk. Or if anyone is looking for me on LinkedIn, am under as Lou Doyle, not Louise Doyle, because only my dad calls me Louise. So I’m under Lou Doyle. So can find me there. And our DMs, I know like you, Mark, are always open. know, we get many.

Mark Simpkins (38:00.099)
Yeah, of course.

Mark Simpkins (38:11.717)
Hahaha

Lou Doyle (38:21.784)
Could we just ask a quick question, staff? Never feel like you can’t do that for anyone who’s listening, because you absolutely can.

Mark Simpkins (38:28.653)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So that’s all we’ve got time for. So this has been FE Gold with me, your host, Mark Simpkins, and thanks for stopping by.