About the Whole College Approach (WCA)
The Whole College Approach (WCA) is an organisational change process aimed at improving students’ engagement, learning experiences and outcomes for maths in Further Education colleges and other large institutions. It involves the development of a shared responsibility for maths across the college and collaborative inter-departmental activity.
In a WCA, a group of vocational, academic and mathematics staff form a collaborative team to analyse their mathematics provision in a holistic way. They then engage in joint planning and implementation of interventions appropriate to their college context.
WCA Programme
The WCA Programme enables college teams to develop well-designed and workable improvement strategies with the aid of a structured process. The process utilises a series of self-assessment tasks which works best when facilitated by an external expert and critical friend.
The WCA Programme was first introduced in April 2021 as part of the CfEM Programme and builds on the Nuffield-funded Mathematics in Further Education Colleges project (MiFEC). A group of ten FE colleges piloted the Programme between May 2021 and July 2022 and a further six colleges joined in May 2022. The resources found here were developed, piloted and evaluated during this time.
The four following sections provide an overview of the Whole College Approach Programme, tasks and process. The programme designers strongly encourage users to follow the process thoroughly and seriously. Evaluation evidence from pilot colleges shows that this will lead to the best outcomes.
The evidence also shows that the unquestioning use of approaches that seem to work elsewhere, without properly exploring the context, is unlikely to be effective.
There are wide contextual differences between colleges and so starting points for developing a WCA can vary dramatically. These differences, combined with the complexity of the issues, underpin the importance of individual colleges taking care to collaboratively explore, analyse and develop appropriate solutions.
Through the WCA process, colleges are enabled to develop rich insights into connected issues affecting maths learning and so be better equipped to design, implement and evaluate strategies that have a real and sustainable impact.
Further WCA resources and information
The Guide introduces the key principles of a Whole College Approach and explains the background to the development of the WCA Programme. It provides an overview of the WCA process, which is structured into four phases:
- Discovery
- Planning
- Intervention
- Review
The main emphasis in the WCA Guide is on the Discovery phase since this is essential for:
- developing a shared understanding of the problems
- carrying out a thorough analysis of the issues, and
- establishing collaborative ways of working.
Access the WCA Guide
How to use the resources
You should read the WCA Guide before looking at the other resources on this website. The case studies then provide examples of how colleges that have followed the WCA Programme developed targeted interventions to suit their own context and climate.
Colleges are encouraged to follow the structured and externally guided WCA Programme to gain the maximum benefit. If this is not possible, the self-assessment tasks included here will support colleges to follow a similar process independently. They have been adapted from the WCA pilot to make them more suitable for self-guided use.
The tasks should be used in conjunction with the WCA Guide to ensure they align with WCA principles and form part of a structured process similar to that developed previously with pilot colleges.
Access the self-assessment tasks
| Document title | Download links |
| Self-assessment tasks guidance | Download now (.pdf) |
| Presentation for self-assessment Task 1 | Download now (.ppt) or (.pdf version) |
| Self-assessment Task 1: Understanding your own college context | Download now (.pdf) |
| Self-assesment Task 1 - Questions | Download now (.pdf) |
| Self-assessment Task 2: Understanding your college starting point | Download now (.pdf) |
| Self-assessment Task 2 - Survey questions | Download now (.pdf) |
| Self-assessment Task 3: Examining the issues | Download now (.pdf) |
| Self-assessment Task 4: Analysing the problem | Download now (.pdf) |
How to use the resources
Firstly, make sure an appropriate core team is in place that can meet regularly to use the materials and then read the Self-assessment tasks guidance. The tasks are designed to develop collaboration and shared understanding within the group and therefore should not be attempted individually (apart from the SAT2 pre-meeting survey).
Each task includes a description of the activity and instructions for use, including guidelines for those chairing the discussions. The tasks will stimulate discussion and help to produce a detailed analysis of the issues before developing an action plan. It is important to allow sufficient time for thorough discussion and to carefully explore any points raised.
These resources provide supplementary information to the WCA Guide and the case studies that may be useful to consider when developing a WCA.
Common issues
Colleges can face similar problems when developing a WCA, but the solutions can be very different. This document features some of the most common issues with maths provision in FE colleges and gives examples of actions that colleges have taken to address them when developing a WCA. These are offered simply as possible options to discuss rather than recommendations. It is strongly recommended that colleges do not adopt any of these approaches without following the processes in the WCA programme since contextual differences need to be considered and issues analysed before being able to identify appropriate actions.
Report on WCA pilot
This document contains further information about the WCA project and findings from the pilot of the WCA programme.