IT is, of course, entirely right that schools and colleges are inspected. Their role in life is vital, ensuring youngsters have a solid education to prepare them for life.

The quality of the students will also feed into the prosperity of the country ensuring it has intelligent, creative and productive citizens.

However, there are times when it feels the correct focus of Ofsted inspectors is lost because of the rigidity of the inspection criteria.

Take Colchester Institute, for example.

The college is known for its vocational courses, for ensuring Colchester, Essex and further afield has enough skilled tradesman, for example, to support industry.

However, the college has been downgraded from a “good” rating to “requiring improvement” and much of this is down to the students’ relatively poor standards in maths and English.

Of course, these core skills are vital.

They are essential for every day life and are, it could be reasonably argued, the corner stones of education.

But has the emphasis on these skills obscured the college’s fundamental work in encouraging and training apprentices?

Should this not have carried more weight?

Reputation is everything and nowhere more so than in education.

Now the college has to invest time to convince potential students of its worth, time, and inevitably money, which might be better spent preparing its students for their vital role in the world of work.