October 16th - the Functional Skills
newsletter
Functional Skills use has really take
off in the past couple of weeks. The
Guroo guys recorded a massive increase in usage. Just last week, nearly 5000 new learners
logged onto Guroo for the first time and the market is seeing new entrants all
the time. This week we report on the
Virtual College e-Apprenticeship offer.
There’s lots of talk around funding and
we know that the SFA are looking at Functional Skills funding, so a great time
to summarise basic funding rates across all sectors.
We’ve also got news of which exam
boards are chosen by you, the result’s may very well surprise you given that
there are now 16 exam boards offering the Functional Skills qualification. They also make pleasant reading for the exam
boards with high levels of customer satisfaction.
And finally we have news of this week’s
webinar which will go ahead on Wednesday at 4.00pm – how to get the best from a
Guroo Free Trial. Very relevant given
that the Guroo guys are reporting up to 5 new registrations per day, plus we
have links to previous webinar recordings too.
As always, your comments and thoughts are
appreciated - let us know what you'd like us to cover in the newsletter by
emailing the editor - jwells@guroo.co.uk
ITE Grant and Functional Skills funding
rates across sectors
A quick reminder that a fee award of £1,500
is available for up to 1,000 applicants training as subject specialists to
teach English and maths (including Functional Skills).
2012/13 funding rates for Functional
Skills depends on the sector, the age of the learner, the type of learning
undertaken and the subject with additional variations for location and
demographics of intake. To complicate matters further, rates for FE Colleges
are unlisted for 2012/13 so can only be quoted as the glh equivalent and 19+ Apprenticeships
have 12.5% of co-funding. Nevertheless, the table below shows the basic
rates but is it important to check with your funding agency your precise
formula and rate.
As I understand it, what the table does
show is that learners who achieve level 1 in an Apprenticeship who then go onto
Level 2 through choice are funded at the higher workplace standalone
qualification rate.
|
Type of
delivery
|
Age
|
Value
|
Notes
|
|
Workplace
|
Any
|
£314
|
Standalone qual
|
|
Workplace
|
16-18
Apprenticeship
|
£224
|
|
|
Workplace
|
19-24
Apprenticeship
|
£183
|
|
|
Workplace
|
25+
Apprenticeship
|
£146
|
|
|
Classroom
|
16-18 School
|
£327
|
|
|
Classroom
|
16-18 College
|
£9.08 per glh
|
Unlisted qual
|
|
Classroom
|
19+ College
|
£5.81 per glh
|
Unlisted qual
|
Massive upturn in Functional Skills
take-up
Functional Skills and GCSE are the ONLY
funded and accredited qualifications for Maths and English to Level 2. The
last few weeks has seen a massive increase in the use of resources to support
Functional Skills, including a new service from the Virtual College.
This combines the best
pre-apprenticeship recruitment solution with on-line apprenticeship resources combined
with Guroo’s Functional Skills resources and optional technical certificates
mapped to the QCF.
The Apprenticeship eAcademy run by
Virtual College includes:
- Pre-apprenticeship
& Recruitment – Including learner profiling, with specific
aptitude tests for Business Administration, Health and Social Care and
Customer Service. These resources can halve recruitment time and costs,
but also add value to the employers you work with and build your brand
awareness.
- Functional
Skills – A
complete solution powered by Guroo Functional Skills. Initial assessment
and full diagnostics, teaching and learning resources and a system that
provides a series of profiles showing learner progression in Maths,
English and ICT.
- Foundation
Level – 6
courses including: Apprentice Induction, Learner Charter Equality and
Diversity, Personal Learning and Thinking Skills (Including
initial self-assessment), Employee Rights and Responsibilities
and Introduction to Health and Safety.
- Technical
Certificates – Content mapped to the QCF to support
technical certificates in Business Administration, Health and Social Care,
Customer Service and Manufacturing frameworks and then mapped to your
awarding body.
Which exam board?
As part of the annual Functional Skills
survey, one of the questions we asked was about which exam board was used. From
the 197 completed responses, only three companies achieved more than 5%
responses.
The two biggest were Pearson and
City&Guilds each with 35% market share of the respondents, OCR were third
at 15% with "all the rest" making up the other 15%.
The research also shows that customer
perception of the exam boards is very positive with 84% either very happy or
quite happy with their choice and this almost certainly shows that the
innovation shown by the exam boards is delivering a very good customer experience.
Wednesday Webinar at 4.00pm
This week’s webinar is entitled
"Getting the best from the Guroo free trial".
Every day we get up to 5 new registrations to use the Guroo Free Trial
system so we thought it would be great idea to do a snappy webinar as a guide
to getting the best from your free trial, presented by Jonathan Wells.
Email info@guroo.co.uk for joining instructions and then join
Jonathan on Wednesday at 4.00pm
Previous webinars are recorded and
available anytime for playback. Simply click on the links below and don’t
forget, if you’d like to have your own 1:1 webinar looking at how Guroo can
help you support Functional Skills, just call us on 0191 305 5045 or email info@guroo.co,uk and we’ll
take it from there.
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