Estyn: Virtual inspection rooms

Aspire systems 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

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

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