BOSSES at Wiltshire College say the decision to merge Trowbridge, Chippenham and Lackham Colleges three years ago has been vindicated by a upbeat Ofsted report.

Two curriculum areas at the college, which has 30,000 students, were marked outstanding with a further eight ranked good in the report published on Friday.

The report was a marked improvement on comments by inspectors who visited the separate colleges in 1998 and 1999, but comes at a time when the college is struggling with a £1.8m shortfall.

Principal George Bright said although negotiations are taking place about redundancies the number of jobs lost could be less than the 13 previously feared.

The Ofsted report gave the college outstanding ratings for visual, performing arts and media and for its provision for students with learning difficulties.

Among the inspectors' observations were the outstanding teaching in art and design, high pass rates, very good specialist resources and excellent student support.

The college also received good ratings in agriculture, animal care, construction, business, sport and leisure, health and social care, psychology, sociology, politics and law and literacy and numeracy. Only one subject, engineering, was marked unsatisfactory.

Mr Bright said: "We think the report is an endorsement of the decision to merge the colleges in 2000. The grades we have got for our curriculum work are a level above what the individual colleges were getting before.

"This is a terrific achievement for the college after only two and a half years. I think it is a pretty fair report, the inspection is a very rigorous process.

"The report is fairly bureaucratic, but when you compare our grades with other further education colleges, it is a very good report indeed.

"We were disappointed by the engineering results. They came about because some staff found the inspection process difficult and they did not perform as well as they usually do."

The engineering department will be re-inspected in the autumn.

When asked about redundancies Mr Bright said: "We are in discussion with a small number of staff and the trade unions. We are looking at relatively few jobs going, perhaps less than was previously thought. We hope to have resolved all of that by September."