The Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) has announced the names of the first five Further Education colleges it will be inspecting under the new arrangements for inspection which come into place as part of the Learning and Skills Council.

Teams from OFSTED will carry out the inspections of Teesside Tertiary College, Redbridge College, Brooklands College, Suffolk College and Stockport College in April and May jointly with the newly formed Adult Learning Inspectorate, taking over the work from the Further Education Funding Council from April 1 this year.

OFSTED says that although these are formal inspections and not pilot projects, the colleges involved will be asked for feedback on the new procedures being used, which form part of the new Common Inspection Framework published next month. The framework, which has been subject to public consultation, will be used for inspections of sixth form colleges, further education colleges, adult education and work-based training. In the summer there will be a review of the process following the OFSTED and college evaluations of how successful the new inspections have been.

OFSTED and ALI are also jointly working on a college inspection handbook, which should be accessible to colleges when a more intensive inspection programme gets underway in the autumn.