My name is Nilab, I am in Year 12 studying biology, psychology, and economics. This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to work with the Edge Foundation for 2 weeks. This experience was something very new to me and it was fascinating learning new things, developing new skills and having the chance to meet enthusiastic and lovely people. I chose the Edge Foundation as I wanted to find out how it would be like working in a different environment and be given a task which I haven’t received before to challenge myself. Working in the office really motivated me as everyone was so determined and passionate with what they had to do and, everyone got on so well with one another, it was an amazing environment to work in.
For my research piece, I wrote a report focussing on Ofsted inspections in colleges. Ofsted had introduced a new inspection framework in September 2019 and my research included comparisons of the old inspection framework with the new inspection framework using articles, documents, and podcasts. Preparing this report helped me gain document analysis skills as well as data analysis skills. One thing I found challenging putting this research together was finding information on Ofsted with colleges, there has been little research done on Ofsted with colleges as Ofsted focus more on schools so pulling out data was a bit difficult but after a lot of reading, I got my report where I wanted it to be. My mentor, Kat Emms, helped me hugely during this research by holding catch-up sessions whilst I wasn’t in the office in case I needed help or had any questions, so I thank her greatly.
My plans for the future are to study law in university and be able to specialise in immigration law, the skills I have developed here will massively help me with what I would like to do in the future, so I am very grateful for this experience.
You can read Nilab's research report below.
