Q I am the college nominee for inspection. We will be visited at the end of the cycle, when everybody will presumably be thinking about learning and skills councils. Will anybody notice our grades? Should I relax about the whole thing?
A You should anyway. Inspection is meant to be a supportive, professional review of your own self-assessment, a process which has no impact upon the normal smooth tenor of college life. That everybdy finds it confrontational, debilitating and bureaucratic is because we are all paranoid. It’s not that the inspectorate gets pleasure from tripping people up, picking the nits out of our information systems, and asking damfool questions to which there is no sensible answer. Poor things, they have to do it. I expect the LSCs will look very hard at the reports, particularly up-to-date ones, so get your retaliation in early.
