Estyn

Virtual inspection rooms

Method4 was approached by Estyn to develop a bespoke inspection system. Estyn is the inspecting body for all education and training providers in Wales. They are tasked with inspecting every nursery, school and adult learning and training provider at least once every six years and producing a report on their findings

THE SERVICES WE PROVIDED

Application Development

CHALLENGES

To create a system that could arrange and coordinate inspections
To allow a team of inspectors to examine different aspects of education and training providers and collate their findings into one overall report
To collect questionnaire responses from learners, parents and providers
To be compatible with Microsoft Word

TECHNOLOGY

THE SOLUTION

A SharePoint platform with bespoke web parts allowed the team to create a Virtual Inspection Room (VIR) for each Inspection
The Open XML SDK was used to write code that reads, writes and modifies Word files
A bespoke questionnaire system was created to feed into the Virtual Inspection Room and inspection reports

OUTCOMES AND BENEFITS

Merges the inspector’s judgement forms and learner/parent questionnaire responses into one concise report for release to the general public
Allows consistency across all Estyn reports
All information is stored on a database so the inspectors can analyse data and produce reports