Driving change

Health & Safety Training, which operates from an accredited training centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, provides safety courses covering forklift, mobile plant and elevated working platform operation.

Earlier in 2015, the company, which is an awarding body for NUCO, RTITB, NPORS, PASMA, IPAF and IOSH, as well as the delivery of EDI awarded NVQs, decided to improve its internal processes and procedures to ensure it was better placed to comply with Ofsted changes that came into force in September.

The move has seen Mesma’s director Carole Loader provide consultancy services, working one-to-one with Health & Safety Training’s quality manager Louise Murray to develop and deliver a structured new self-assessment and improvement planning system to support future evaluative activities.

Mesma’s initial consultancy work supported the development of a framework to secure Health & Safety Training Ltd’s future quality assurance requirements around safeguarding, CPD, inspection notification, communications planning, observation processes, filing systems and accessibility, securing stakeholder views, and subcontractor QA arrangements.

Mesma also examined ways for handling and tracking management information to enable the company to be more responsive to trends and showcase performance management successes.

The work undertaken by Carole Loader has not only equipped Louise Murray to develop her career through her own enhanced research capabilities but also paved the way for the introduction of Mesma technology to improve visibility and access to critical performance data.

Adopting the Mesma software was the ‘logical next step’ says Louise Murray after the initial coaching work revealed how better prepared she and Health & Safety Training Ltd would be for Ofsted - including the Common Inspection Framework (CIF) - by having an improved structure and greater self-assessment and improvement planning in place.

The software provides improvements in the training provider’s capacity to undertake self-assessment, delivering superior managerial control and bringing greater transparency and efficiencies to time intensive processes – in short, all the information required for Ofsted inspections is readily available.

Mesma is an adaptable, versatile and cost effective web-based resource, which enables important areas of the self-assessment process and the associated improvement plan activities to be allocated to authorised people within any education environment. Its key purpose is to drive accountability to improve educational provision for students and learners.

Time has been invested in examining how well Health & Safety Training Ltd’s systems meet the CIF, explained Louise Murray, alongside safeguarding and IQA arrangements, specifically those focused on monitoring the impact of quality assurance activities to ensure they have a beneficial impact on improving operational practices.

She said: "The initial work with Carole has been invaluable in developing new approaches to managing Ofsted inspections, while regulations around safeguarding can be conformed to much easier.

"We are now moving ahead with using Mesma, and are still populating it, but already we are seeing significant improvements.

"It helps us to keep a clear record of where we are and what we need to improve on with a focus on developments that directly impact on people right across the organisation. We feel it has definitely improved our readiness for inspection, while offering greater transparency so we see easily what areas need improving and why.

"Moreover, the senior leadership team and managing director benefit from shared ownership of the system, enabling them to see critical information about improvement and planning at the press of a button.

"This will help them to make quicker and better informed decisions about the business as we move forward in the light of the Ofsted changes.”

Mesma was set-up in response to changes implemented by education watchdog Ofsted, which led to schools, colleges and independent providers receiving reduced notice of inspection. It is owned and operated by three directors - Neil Donkin, Carole Loader and Louise Doyle - who between them have more than 30 years experience in business and working in with the education sector.