Boring or just badly written?

I was privileged to be on the panel of a functional skills workshop at the SecEd diploma conference last week. Also on the panel were two year 11s who described the maths functional skills assessment as "boring".

They were asked to work out how many disabled parking spaces and regular parking spaces could be put into a car park. You know, that common problem that we're faced with every day.

How ridiculous to ask this - it's not functional, it's not common, it has no bearing on real life and it's certainly boring.

Come on exam bodies, get real and start setting problems that reflect today's problems - if we do this, we'll loose the boring ticket and get back to where functional skills should be.

And if you want a look at some real problems - get a look at the Guroo Functional Skills resources. We've spent ages trying to aim these at the 14-19 market and we ensure they aren't boring at all. www.guroo.info is the place to go.