Monday 30 November 2009

Independent schools not doing Diplomas

A report in the Independent says that leading independent schools have not taken up the diploma.
Come on guys - quel surprise!
You don't pay £27k per year (latest boarding fees at Abingdon school) to do the same course as you can do at the FE college.
You pay £27K per year to get the very results in A level to ensure you get into Oxford or Cambridge.

www.guroo.info resources for functional skills


Number 1 of 734

Guroo Bluffers Guide to functional skills is the number 1 functional skills resource on TES Connect.
this is based on the scores given, downloads and comments - a great result for Guroo!
For more infor go to www.guroo.info and get your own laminated version.

No more fiddling with values?

Now here's a story which I personally welcome.
It appears that Ofqual - the new exams regulator - will have the power to decide what is the relative value of qualifications particularly in 14-19 rather than the Government.

This is almost certainly in response to the "easy" vocational qualifications which can be worth 4 GCSEs each yet be taught in the time it takes to teach 1 or 2. Of course it is bound to affect the score given to Diplomas but only if the Government try to stretch the qualifications to give them a higher rating than they deserve.

I would also argue that some quals (such as functional skills) appear to be much harder to pass - maybe they should be given more equivalence then?

Posted by Jonathan Wells of Guroo Functional Skills www.guroo.info

Sunday 22 November 2009

Guroo Functional Skills Newsletter 17/11/09

Our bi-weekly look at the world of functional skills.

Ofqual publish new Functional Skills criteria, a new DCSF publication about Functional Skills in Diplomas, another chance to get your hands on the Guroo posters and intriguing thoughts about GNVQ, BTEC and OCR Nationals.



Ofqual publish Functional Skills criteria. Last week, Ofqual published the Functional Skills qualifications criteria and the specific criteria for the individual Functional Skills in English, mathematics and ICT. These are the criteria against which all exam bodies will be expected to assess. A link to the download page is here.

Nuts and Bolts from DCSF. A new publication in the "nuts and bolts" series has hit the streets aimed at Functional Skills in Diplomas. 20 pages long, it reprises the main elements of Functional Skills and features case studies from Stoke, Dudley and Wolverhampton college. Click on the pic below to get to the right page in Teachernet.

Functional Skills standards mapping posters from Guroo. We had an astonishing level of requests for the poster as a result of this announcement two weeks ago. All our subscribers should have received copies by now but if you're not a customer, here's a another chance to request a pdf copy. Drop me an email at jwells@guroo.co.uk and I'll send you a pdf copy by return.

And finally, thoughts about unintended consequences. One of our customers asked us whether Functional Skills would be introduced to BTEC qualifications and this led us down a most revealing route which we think has big consequences. It appears that there will only be four funded qualifications routes from September 2010:

  • GCSE/A Level

  • Diplomas

  • Apprenticeships

  • Foundation Learning

That means OCR, BTEC, GNVQ qualifications WILL ONLY be funded as part of additional learning in Diplomas IF they are part of the QCF. Click here to read the latest on the QCDA website.

Jonathan's Functional Skills blog - 135 entries and counting.......

Click here for the new website for functional skills support from National Strategies and LSIS





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Wednesday 18 November 2009

We're up for an award

I must admit that I'm not great at entering awards - it always seems to take such a long time to put together something that's worthy of an entry. But I do manage it sometime and over the summer I was told about the Northern Marketing Awards as I'm a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

So I entered Guroo in the product launch category, using the name Guroo Functional Skills Resources.

And we've been shortlisted - which is really nice, what's even better is the fact that we're up against some pretty big organisations such as the Great North Museum (a multi million pound launch if ever there was one) and Kingston Communications.

We find out next week more about this so lets wish Functional Skills Resources by Guroo good luck in the Northern Marketing Awards.

Test for practice

Link to functional skills resources.

Time to start learning again

I've had this blog for a couple of years now and I do my very best to keep it up to date, on the whole quite successfully. But today I'm in a training room learning more about blogs and boy, I didn't know how much I didn't know!

So instead of rambling on about Guroo, or functional skills resources, or maybe even 14-19 curriculum, I'm going to have to get much better at thinking about my blog audience and who reads it!

So that's a challenge for me - let's see how it goes from here on in.

Sunday 15 November 2009

You can't defend the undefendable

in this weeks TES, Angela O'Donoghue, Principla at SUndelrand City College says that it's unfair to run down the Skills for Life sganda.
She says that the College has trained thousanads through t's move on scheme which is essentially a re-branded Adult Lit & Num qualification. What she doesn't say is that there is very little training involved. I live in Sunderland, people are encouraged to simply take the test - it's no wonder that getting a qual does little to improve skills!

It's also a surprise to me that the City's colleges don't offer the more rigorous and demanding Diploma and Functional Skills, preferring to offer the much easier to pass route of SfL and BTEC. Why - a senior person told me it was all about pass rates. God forbid that the college decided to offer a course that employers demanded when it was as easy to go for the easy option.

I would ask that the College gets into the real world and takes its responsibilities to train and teach rather than get students past a test.


Friday 6 November 2009

The Tipping point?

I've just seen something which represents a tipping point, the point at which something just starts to grow for no apparent reason.

I placed some guroo learning resources on TES Connect a while ago. For months, they were ignored until August, since then 27 requests for the resource, more than 1000 downloads and a 5 star rating.

And every week, we get more - another 5 genuine enquiries this week from potential customers.

I'd like to say I could work out why something like this happens, but I can't!