How Nottingham College Transformed Initial Assessments and Student Tracking with CENTURY

Nottingham College is one of the largest further education providers in the UK with over 20,000 students enrolled every year, operating across multiple specialised campuses and hub locations to deliver study programmes, adult education, and apprenticeships.

The digital transformation which has taken place over the past few years has become a key factor in ensuring that students at Nottingham College are provided with the best opportunities to grow, develop and learn. The introduction of platforms such as CENTURY has been central in enabling us to demonstrate this commitment in practice by investing in personalised learning, individual learner progression support and by providing staff with additional tools to support them in their roles.

Our Challenge: Driving Compliance and Engagement at Scale

With thousands of 16–19-year-olds on Programmes of Study required to sit initial assessments in English and maths, we needed a bulletproof methodology to track compliance and student completion rates. We faced several key operational challenges:

• Siloed Data: We needed a way to pull assessment results seamlessly into our existing internal systems like EBS and our apprenticeship platform, OneFile.
• Accessibility: Traditional functional skills content could occasionally prove too complex or intimidating for our lower-level learners, risking early disengagement.
• Staff Empowerment: We had to ensure tutors and assessors across all our campuses could confidently run assessments, troubleshoot technical hitches, and utilise data effectively.

Our Solution: A Data-Driven, Student-First Approach

1. Our PowerBI Initial Assessment Dashboard

To keep tabs on compliance, we worked alongside our incredible System Development and Reporting Teams to build a sophisticated Initial Assessment Dashboard that updates overnight to give us an accurate, near-live view of student progress.

The dashboard allows us to filter data dynamically by:

• Campus & Team Area: (e.g., Adams, Basford, High Pavement, Highfields, City Hub).
• Funding Group & Age Bracket: Tracking 14–16s, 16–19 Study Programmes, and the Adult Skills Fund.
• Condition of Funding (CoF): Quickly identifying who is exempt, who has met the criteria, and who is actively required to enrol.

Crucially, this data drills down directly to individual student lists and automatically syncs with EBS and OneFile to streamline tracking for all.

2. Bespoke Course Building for Lower-Level Learners

Listening closely to staff and student feedback, our Quality Systems team recognised that standard functional skills content could be too steep a hill to climb for certain learners. In response, we built non-standardised introductory courses within CENTURY. These courses break down foundational English and maths concepts into manageable steps, making the platform highly accessible, boosting learner confidence, and lowering the barrier to entry.

“The idea was initially developed in response to the feedback provided by our ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) tutors who shared that not all students will be able to engage with functional skills content that is available. Drawing on my own experience as a former ESOL student and understanding the anxiety of attending an English-speaking school without being able to communicate confidently in English, I was able to come up with a way of adapting the existing courses to benefit students in a similar situation. This proved to be successful in the ESOL provision, and we decided to work with other areas including Supported Learning, to further adapt courses to suit students enrolled on lower levels of English and maths.” – Julia Jaksik, Century Tech Coordinator, Teaching, Learning, Improvement & Innovation, Nottingham College

3. Deep-Dive Student Tracking

Beyond initial assessments, we utilise a dedicated ‘Student Track’ report to monitor active learning. This system evaluates:

• Total study time and unique CENTURY micro-lessons (‘nuggets’) completed.
• Correct question percentages and total points scored.
• Our Future Development: We are currently evolving this reporting framework to look even more closely at English and maths nuggets separately, distinctly measuring in-class versus out-of-class independent learning.

4. Centralised Staff Support & SharePoint Hub

To guarantee a smooth rollout, we established a centralised SharePoint hub acting as a single source of help for our staff. This page contains accessibility guides, diagnostic resources, and an internally authored Initial Assessments Guide that covers step-by-step instructions, FAQs, and live troubleshooting. We tend to use this alongside showing the actual interface of CENTURY during training sessions to make it easier to visualise.

Next academic year we will be working on introducing a new additional drop-in training framework, where staff will be able to attend monthly sessions to receive guidance and support in specific areas of CENTURY they would like to develop. 

Results and Impact

Since taking over the development and implementation of CENTURY in January 2025, we have seen an amazing increase in tutor and student engagement with the system. The total number of learning nuggets completed in maths went up by 38,704 and 23,159 in English, in just a year between July 2025 and July 2026. We have also seen a great change in completion levels of initial assessments allowing us to ensure compliance across the whole college.

By building our compliance and tracking measures on successful historical case studies published by CENTURY alongside other education providers, we successfully turned a complex logistical task into a streamlined, automated process.

Our Key Triumphs:

• Total Visibility: Thousands of our students have been successfully processed through English and maths initial assessments across our entire college network.
• System Integration: We have eradicated manual data entry by pushing CENTURY insights straight to our internal college systems and OneFile.
• Tailored Learning: We created a supportive environment where our lower-level learners can thrive rather than feel overwhelmed.

“Working with CENTURY has transformed the way we manage English and maths initial assessments and monitor learner progress through the platform’s learning nuggets across the college. By combining CENTURY’s adaptive learning platform with our own reporting systems, we have created a streamlined approach to compliance monitoring while giving tutors and managers greater visibility of learner progress. 

The flexibility of the platform has also allowed us to develop bespoke learning pathways that better support students of all levels and abilities, helping to build confidence and improve engagement from the very start of their learning journey. CENTURY has become an integral part of our digital strategy, enabling us to deliver a more efficient, accessible and learner-centred experience across Nottingham College.” – Rebecca Godwin, Quality Systems Manager, Teaching, Learning, Improvement & Innovation, Nottingham College

 

“Partnering with CENTURY has allowed us to transform the way we support both staff and students across the college. The enhanced visibility of student engagement and progress has improved compliance, allowed us to make timely, data-informed interventions that drive better outcomes.” – Julia Jaksik, Century Tech Coordinator, Teaching, Learning, Improvement & Innovation, Nottingham College

Looking to transform your college’s approach to Initial Assessment?

Book a consultation with the CENTURY team today.

Already a customer? Speak to your account manager about Initial Assessment or the Connect API.