Inspectors visited the college on December 12 to evaluate the progress that the Eastbourne and Lewes campuses had made since the last inspection in November 2017, when the college – known as Sussex Downs at the time – was judged as ‘requires improvement’. Ofsted inspectors were impressed with the processes that the college leadership had put in place to implement the recommendations from the last report. The report said, “High aspirations and ambitions permeate every aspect of college life, from governors to students. Staff have a renewed sense of urgency and importance about improving the quality of teaching, learning and assessment and students’ and apprentices’ outcomes. “A very high proportion of students have completed a meaningful work experience placement or have firm plans in place to complete one before the end of the academic year. Students recognise and value the benefits they gain in developing their skills during work experience. They appreciate the links between their skills development at work and their learning back at college. This helps raise their aspirations and ambitions further.” Clive Cooke, college CEO, said, “We’re absolutely delighted with the outcome of our latest monitoring visit and the findings show a fantastic amount of progress over a very short period of time. We have invested a lot of effort in ensuring our students receive high-quality education, training, and work experience, and the results have shown that we have made significant progress in a number of areas. I’d like to give my personal thanks to all my colleagues who have worked so hard to enable us to make these measurable and rapid improvements and look forward to continuing this improvement.”