A student being led up the wrong path

I took a most frustrating call today from a student (let’s call her Helen) who had bought access to www.myguroo.co.uk so she could practice and revise for her Functional Skills English Level 2 exams in a weeks time.

Me Good afternoon Guroo!

Helen I’ve just bought the cram4exam access for English and I want my money back

Me Oh, why is that?

Helen Because I’ve just been on the quizzes and they aren’t multiple choice

Me They aren’t meant to be - so what’s the problem?

Helen My teacher told me to go on Bitesize, Move On and Key Skills 4u to revise and they are all multiple choice so yours must be wrong

Me No, we are right, your teacher shouldn’t be telling you to practice Functional Skills using Key Skills resources because they are so different. Anyone expecting there Functional Skills exam to be a series of multiple choice questions is going to be in for a shock.

Helen So how do I revise then.

Me Try doing a worksheet

Helen But they all ask me to write loads

Me yes

Helen So how do you know if I have got it right

Me We don’t – you have to judge for yourself using our model solutions and by working out if you’ve covered all the things we said you should be looking for.

Helen So who marks the work I do

Me No-one, but you can check if you’re doing well by doing the quizzes

Helen But they are hard and take a while

Me yes …….

Helen Is there not somewhere else I can go that just does multiple choice questions like Bitesize?

There’s more but you’ll have got my point, there are no short cuts, exams are hard, and as a student tweeted today “75 minutes and only two questions – what’s that all about?” Well actually, that’s Functional Skills.