Making Sense of Functional Skills conference

A special edition of the newsletter with just one news item

A series of regional conferences dedicated solely to Functional Skills has been announced and bookings are now open.

Tuesday November 16th in London. The first one is scheduled to be held at the Victorian Grade 1 listed Mary Ward House, in Bloomsbury, London on Tuesday 16th November. Click the banner above or here for a direct link to the programme and booking details.

Keynotes include Ofqual, YPLA, employers representatives, LA 14-19 adviser, training providers and resource developers.

Workshops include Functional Skills in GCSE, Apprenticeships and Foundation Learning with Guroo providing two workshops focused on Functional Skills resources.

Main sponsors are Guroo. If you are a current subscriber to Guroo, your school/college/institution is entitled to 1 free delegate place and 1 half price delegate place. Call Guroo for your code to use when booking.

Delegate fees are limited to a maximum of £150. Newsletter readers who use the promotion code NEWS25 will see their delegate fee reduced to £125. Great value!

Next issue! The next issue of the Functional Skills newsletter will be sent on Tuesday 5th October. If you have a story, a question or a suggestion - please contact jwells@guroo.co.uk Please also feel free to forward this newsletter to your Functional Skills friends, it's free, informative and occasionally just a little bit of fun!

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A case for Functional Skills here!

Inmates may get better education if shake-up goes ahead

A review of prison education is expected to propose a big shake-up to improve the service

This article by Andrew Mourant appeared last week in Guardian.

Surely, the Functional Skills curriculum is perfectly positioned to provide the basis of prison education?

Funding Agency advice

Here's the link to the full document.

Advice from the Skills Funding Agency includes:

Functional Skills in English, maths and ICT will replace Key Skills qualifications in

Communication, Application of Number and ICT from September 2010. There has

been an extension to Key Skills delivered in Apprenticeship Frameworks until April

2011 allowing providers the choice of offering either Functional Skills or Key Skills

in the interim. However, Key Skills funded through Adult Learner Responsive

(ALR) funding will not be funded by the Skills Funding Agency from 1 September

2010. Only continuing learners who enrolled before 1 September 2010 will be

funded to complete their qualification up to the certification end date of 31 August

2012.

On 13 January, the Department for Children Schools’ and Families (DCSF) and

Learning and Skills Council (LSC) published the statement of priorities and

investment strategy in which it stated that providers are now expected to deliver

these Functional Skills qualifications for young people wherever possible. This

means that it should no longer be necessary for 16 - 18 years olds to take the

Certificates in Adult Literacy or Adult Numeracy and the number of young people

taking those qualifications should reduce significantly in 2010/11. It is the intention

of the Young People’s Learning Agency (YPLA), subject to confirmation by the

JACQA Biennial Review, that adult literacy and numeracy qualifications will no

longer be funded for young people after 2010/11.

Functional Skills Newsletter Sept 21st

Our bi-weekly look at the world of Functional Skills.

In this issue we have news about the Governments review of vocational education, booking for the first regional functional skills conference is now open, fully updated links to all accredited awarding organisations and an intriguing story about 3D Functional Skills!

Vocational review underway. Michael Gove has announced a major independent review of 14-19 vocational education will be led by Prof Alison Wolf. The review will cover organisation, funding, progression and the roles of key stake holders such as employers, AOs and training providers. Click here for a direct link to the statement.

Making Sense of Functional Skills conference open for bookings today. The first in a series of regional conferences exclusively about Functional Skills will be held at Mary Ward House, Bloomsbury, London on Tuesday 16th November from 9.30 to 3.30. With a great range of speakers including employer representatives, Ofqual, expert practitioners in Foundation Learning and Apprenticeships and representatives of Awarding Organisations, these are must go to events for everyone involved in Functional Skills. More on booking information next time along with special offers for newsletter readers.

Now there's 111 to choose from! We've updated the ever popular link to all the exam bodies and all 111 accredited Functional Skills qualifications here.

3D Functional Skills! We picked this up last week. The Functional Skills Network Programme visited Fusedworks last week to see how 3D technology can be used to deliver Functional Skills. We don't know much more, other than Fusedworks is a commercial arm of Doncaster College but we'd like to know more so if you've been involved in this, get in touch and we'll feature you in the future. The news report is here.

Functional Skills resources from Guroo

Next issue! The next issue of the Functional Skills newsletter will be sent on Tuesday 5th October. If you have a story, a question or a suggestion - please contact jwells@guroo.co.uk Please also feel free to forward this newsletter to your Functional Skills friends, it's free, informative and occasionally just a little bit of fun!

Daily Mail article about exam boards

Is this the elephant in the room starting to get talked about?

Unlike many exams Functional Skills criteria are not defined by the AOs.

GFSE

I'm excited about this!

Guroo Functional Skills Engagement programme = GFSE.

We're just pulling together the details but it will involve four key themes:

• Making Sense of Functional Skills - a series of major functional skills conferences with the first held in London on 16th November followed by a one in the North in late January, the Midlands in late February and South West in March.
• The Guroo Associate Programme where we bring together expert practitioners in Functional Skills with schools and colleges and offer a menu of services available to purchase.
• Guroo training where associates are employed by Guroo to deliver great training to Guroo subscribers
• The Functional Skills newsletter which is delivered every two weeks during term time to nearly 6000 practitioners in the sector.

Education Secretary Michael Gove announces review of 14-19 vocational education

I found this when doing a press search - Jonathan

Education Secretary Michael Gove today announced a major independent review of vocational education for 14- to 19-year-olds, to be led by Professor Alison Wolf, of King’s College London.

Mr Gove said that for too long vocational qualifications had not been properly valued and that a gap had been left in the country’s skills base as a result.

Click here for the full story

Making Sense of Functional Skills Newsletter September 7th

Our bi-weekly look at the world of Functional Skills.

In this issue we have news about the closure of FSSP and National Strategies, a major new Functional Skills conference, fully updated links to all accredited qualifications and an update about Guroo 2.0.

FSSP closed. LSIS announced the closure of the Functional Skills Support Programme effective from August 31st. There is no longer any post-16 central support for Functional Skills. Existing materials and resources will transfer to the Excellence Gateway. Support for schools and LAs is available until March 2011 from National Strategies.

GFSE - a major new conference about Functional Skills. Early information about the Guroo Functional Skills Engagement conference. With the closure of FSSP and NS plus the winding down of QCDA and Becta, the Guroo Guys are stepping up to the mark and organising a series of 1 day Functional Skills conferences. The first will be held in London on November 16th. Get involved - tell us what you'd like to hear about - email jwells@guroo.co.uk with keynote and session requests.

Now there's 111 to choose from! We've updated the ever popular link to all the exam bodies and all 111 accredited Functional Skills qualifications here.

Guroo 2.0 is Go! The beta version of Guroo 2.0 is now available to Guroo's existing subscribers - just let your account manager know if you want access. As well as important updates to existing materials, Guroo 2.0 includes 14 new cross-curriculum vocational Challenges, extra Foundation Learning content, and the exciting new "My Functional Skills" tracker.

Functional Skills resources from Guroo

Next issue! The next issue of the Functional Skills newsletter will be sent on Tuesday 21st September. If you have a story - please contact jwells@guroo.co.uk Please also feel free to forward this newsletter to your Functioanl Skills friends, it's free, informative and occassionally just a little bit of fun!