March 6th - the Functional Skills newsletter
This week we have details of a brilliant special offer from Guroo for organisations in the process of moving to Functional Skills for September, an update on a very busy events season (including a new national conference majoring on Functional Skills), a report and survey from the national numeracy campaign and details of the latest Wednesday webinar recordings and the subject for tomorrow's session - "The Buyer's Guide to Functional Skills Products".
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Preparing for Functional Skills in September? - bridge the gap with Guroo
We don't normally lead on a story about Guroo's own Functional Skills products, but this one is relevant to newsletter readers – and some of you would probably kick us later if we didn’t tell you about it now!
We are getting a significant increase in the number enquiries from organisations preparing for a September start on Functional Skills. Many want to hit the ground running then, some only intend to really start in September. So we have constructed a special offer to help bridge the next few months for anyone who is devising a Functional Skills implementation plan for the next 6 months.
We call it “5 to1” – because that is the ratio of free licences you can get if you take part. You can make it work for you in two ways:
1) For every 5 Guroo User Licences* you buy now – but for use in September – we will give you free of charge 1 additional User Licence to use now. That’s an ideal way to get a group of free licences that you can use immediately for internal training, pilot groups, or just for your tutors to get up to speed.
Or, if you want to buy more licences now …
2) For every 5 Guroo User Licences you buy now – for use now – we will give you free of charge 1 additional User Licence to use in September. That means you can buy the quantity of Licences you need now, and at the same time create a stock of free licences to use later.
But you need to let us know quickly if you are interested in this. 20% is a lot to give away, so we are only committed to this offer until Friday 16th March. We haven’t made it public, so at the moment it is only available to newsletter readers and direct enquiries – though you are welcome to forward it to people you think may be interested.
To discuss the offer, simply email sales@guroo.co.uk or call us on 0191 305 5045.
To order, download an order form at here and mention the "5 to 1" offer to get your free licences.
*This offer applies to User (Tutor and Learner) Licences only – new customers will have a small one-off Establishment Licence to pay as well.
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Major Functional Skills events
It is the season for conferences, and the massive interest in Functional Skills is leading to a shortage of places. The recent event at Staffs University day organised by Tina Richardson led to many being turned away, Managing Functional Skills in Stratford was exceptionally well attended and we know that several AELP events focussed on Functional Skills are already fully booked with additional events being added to satisfy demand. Two more events in March are:
Literacy and Numeracy conference - defining and tackling the challenge. This is a one day conference organised by NTRL and held at Aston University, Birmingham on Wednesday 21st March. It will focus on the current challenges facing teaching in literacy, numeracy, Functional English and Functional Maths and will give providers an opportunity to share ideas and practice in order to respond to the challenges as Functional Skills replace Key Skills and Adult Basic Skills in the next few months. The conference will be chaired by Prof Lorna Unwin with speakers from IOE, Guroo, BIS, LSIS and Ofsted. Please mention this newsletter if you book.
Making a reality of Functional Skills is a new conference just announced by LSIS/AELP who are keen to ensure all members are fully prepared and equipped to take on the delivery of Functional Skills in September 2012. It is free to attend and aimed at all providers of Functional Skills in post-16 education. It takes place on 26 March at the Congress Centre, Great Russell Street, London. It may already be full but the organisers are committed to putting on more events so please register your interest by contacting AELP. As always, please mention this newsletter!
Not an event as such but the Functional Skills Special Interest Group is a newly formed group within AELP with a first meeting in the next week or so (already fully booked). Contact AELP for more information.
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National Numeracy campaign identifies 17 million adults with poor maths skills
Half the working-age population have numeracy skills which are Entry Level or below and it's getting worse according to a new campaign group.
Adults who struggle with numeracy are twice as likely to be unemployed compared to those with a level 2 maths qualification, but perhaps the most significant finding is that nearly half of the people surveyed by YouGov for the research are quite happy about this!
The full report is here - makes interesting reading.
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| The Functional Skills Wednesday Webinar It's a return to the webinar this week for Jonathan Wells (editor of this newsletter) who will be doing a session called: "The Buyer's Guide to Functional Skills Products". Jonathan will look at the offers available from all the major "solution" suppliers and we've also invited those suppliers to join us on-line to answer your questions during the webinar. Email info@guroo.co.uk and we'll send you the link on Wednesday. So join us at 4.05pm on Wednesday 7th March for a top level overview of paid-for and free tools and resources in the market, hopefully supported by key suppliers' representatives too. Replay previous webinars at the links below. Simply enter your name and use guroo as the password. Initial and Diagnostic Assessments Reporting and tracking tools in Guroo 2.1 Guroo 2.1 User and Group Admin Functional Skills Policy, Rumour and Opinion ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please Plus One us on Google follow us on Twitter @guroofs and like us on Facebook at guroo.functionalskills. The next newsletter is likely to be Tuesday March 20th - if you have anything you'd like us to know about, just get in touch jwells@guroo.co.uk |
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