 Josh Mazgelis_150.jpg "Students wearing mortarboards (C) Josh Mazgelis")
Students wanting to study social work will be able to find out much more about the courses available to them, following the publication of previously undisclosed inspection reports.
In order to be more open about the work we do to regulate social work training, and to drive up standards, we have published reports about every institution that offers the social work degree on our website. It is hoped that the release of the reports will improve provision, by highlighting best practice and encouraging universities to do more to attract the best students.
The ‘annual monitoring reports’ cover the academic period 2008-2009 and contain information which has been submitted by the universities and checked by the GSCC.
We were pleased to note that universities are continuing to seek involvement from people who use services. A total of 5,862 service users and carers were directly involved across all institutions in the provision of the degree.
The reports suggest an improvement in the supply of practice placements, with 99.4 per cent of students finding placements. Ninety-four per cent of universities assessed placements prior to usage with 57 per cent rejecting potential placements due to their unsuitability. All universities evaluated placements once completed and, out of the 14,172 placements delivered, only 115 were reported as not meeting quality standards.
Despite this, the GSCC continues to hear evidence that more can be done to improve placements. The GSCC has developed mandatory national standards to ensure all institutions quality assess practice learning places in a consistent way. We have also called on universities to hold early meetings with employers to match placements with intake numbers, and to decrease student numbers if they do not have sufficient placements.
