And of course the last post had the wrong date. It is Feb 26th.
Monday, 25 February 2013
February 5th - the Functional Skills newsletter
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February 5th - the Functional Skills
newsletter
This week we have news about the
significant changes in how schools are managing vocational qualifications,
more analysis on how the funding changes have impacted in the sector,
"meet the team" highlights the support guys, and of course, webinar
news.And just a nice little snippet that doesn't warrant a separate news item but for us, it's quite important, last week saw us achieve a pretty big landmark when our 100,000th user logged onto the Guroo website this year. 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 |
The carrot and stick approach to
including vocational qualifications in school performance tables is having a
serious affect according to a report by the Edge Foundation and reported in
Sec-Ed.
Just a few years ago, schools couldn't
get enough of vocational qualifications, with lots of students completing
qualifications that were ranked as worth 2 or 4 GCSE passes. Twelve months ago,
the Government announced that the number of vocational qualifications that
count towards performance tables would be reduced from 31,175 to just 125.
And the effect of that according to Jan
Hodges of the Edge Foundation is that "Schools are now dropping valuable
technical, practical and work-related courses as they get no credit for the
provision". But at the same time,
the General Secretary of the NUT contradicted this by saying "Schools and
teachers should be free to use their professional judgement to allow young
people to follow the qualifications that are most likely to be beneficial to
them on an individual basis."
This issue is even more relevant now
that traineeships are fast approaching with an increased emphasis on Vocational
Activity and Functional Skills and it appears that the elephant in the room
refuses to leave - do schools value their performance table position above the
needs of the learner?
Meet more of the team!
Thank you for the positive response to the meet the team feature in the last newsletter - this time it's the Support guys!
Simon and Andy are the people you generally talk to when you have a problem or question or indeed a suggestion to make. As well as writing all the code to support the continued development of www.guroo.co.uk they also set-up new accounts, manage the web servers and overnight database updates when users are added and deliver the technical webinars.
Simon (left) ssproat@guroo.co.uk and Andy (right) ahopper@guroo.co.uk are both available on 0191 305 5053 and support@guroo.co.uk They are both graduates of the University of Sunderland in Computing disciplines and, as you'd expect, are big followers of the local football club!
Say hello to either or indeed both of
them and as an added bonus, we'll send a brand new Guroo mug to the first 10
"hello's" by email!
The TES reported last week on an issue
that's becoming a major problem for independent training providers with SFA
contracts.
Whilst the funding for Functional
Skills has been more than doubled (see below) and it's been backdated to August
2012, the value of the SFA contracts to providers are unchanged. Some providers (almost always the successful
ones) are therefore "running out" of funding and having to delay or
cancel new apprenticeships starts.
The report does go on to say that SFA
are aware of the potential issues and an SFA spokesperson has said that
"changes will be reflected in 2012/13 and 2013/14 allocations", it's
just not clear what that means!
New funding rates applicable from and
backdated to August 2012
• Functional
Skills delivered as a standalone qualification increased from £314 to £724
• Functional
Skills delivered within 16-18 apprenticeships increased from £224 to £471
• Functional
Skills delivered within 19-24 apprenticeships increased from £173 to £362
• Functional
Skills delivered within 25+ apprenticeships increased from £138 to £290
Wednesday Webinar at 4.00pm
"What's New in Guroo and
Functional Skills"
is the title of this week's webinar and this week, it will be delivered by
Jonathan. As always we find that many more people enjoy coming back for
the recording afterwards, but if you'd like to be live, just drop an email to info@guroo.co.uk
Join us on Wednesday at 4pm.
All previous webinars are recorded and
available anytime for playback - login as a guest and the password is password.
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.
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Funding
It seems that there is one rule for FE Colleges and another for Training Providers and all are struggling to understand the complexities of the funding systems.
See this story in the TES - maybe a little bit of a scare story, but there must be elements of truth in there.
See this story in the TES - maybe a little bit of a scare story, but there must be elements of truth in there.
Monday, 4 February 2013
Functional Skills Newsletter Feb 5th
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February 5th - the Functional Skills
newsletter
It's been such a busy couple of weeks
in the Functional Skills world with lots of events, lots of activity and from
Guroo's point of view, masses of website hits! And with Matthew Hancock
(BIS Minister) supporting Functional Skills through his actions and funding,
it really feels like the corner has been turned!
This week we have news about the
forthcoming Apprenticeships Week, a new feature called "meet the
team", a quick review of events and of course, webinar news.
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
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National Apprenticeship Week
This year's week of events and
publicity takes place from 11th to 15th March. Coincidentally, it has
been launched in the same week in which there was a surprising drop in the number of under 19 Apprentices and
we came a step closer to understanding the wider picture and how the Government wants
to promote Apprenticeships, so it probably comes at a really important time!
Events planned include:
A major conference organised by Apprenticeships 4 England in
London on 13th March.
More than 100 local events from schools fairs to employer open
days.
The Apprenticeships toolkit available from the NAS
Lots more information will no doubt
become available as the events draw closer.
Meet the team!
It's good to get personal so we thought
you'd love to know who you were talking to, starting with Cathy and Daisy, the
business development team at Guroo.
These guys are the people who deliver
the demo webinars, call you during your trial period and generally help you
understand how to get the best out of Guroo in the early days. You'll
also see them regularly at conferences and exhibitions.
Cathy (left) cvaissieres@guroo.co.uk 07595 120913 leads the team.
She's based near Winchester is an experienced teacher and Functional
Skills practitioner and originally hails from Toulouse, France.
Daisy (right) dwells@guroo.co.uk 07737 317735 is our new recruit.
She's based in the office in Houghton-le-Spring, knows Functional Skills
and Guroo extremely well (spot the surname) and lives in Washington.
Say hello to either or indeed both of
them and as an added bonus, we'll send a brand new Guroo mug to the first 10
"hello's" by email!
"All Things
Functional" event quotes
It was great to see
so many people in Birmingham recently (more than 150 I believe). It was
extremely well received and below I have added some quotes from the day.
- Opportunities to hear about and discuss
initial and diagnostic assessment. Guroo materials interesting. Whole
event was great.
- Enjoyable day. Found details on some
interesting resources.
- A well organised. The maths session was
useful, however the ICT was brilliant!
- A great day thank you.
- I found the whole day more interesting and
informative than I thought possible!
So on Friday 14th June, it will all
start again - email paul.emmett@emskills.com for more info.
We've also been asked by EMSkills and
IQ to publicise a research survey into QCF English and Maths
qualifications. Click here for the 6 question survey.
Wednesday Webinar at 4.00pm
"What's New in Guroo and
Functional Skills"
is the title of this week's webinar and this week, it will be delivered by
Jonathan. As always we find that many more people enjoy coming back for
the recording afterwards, but if you'd like to be live, just drop an email to info@guroo.co.uk
Join us on Wednesday at 4pm.
All previous webinars are recorded and
available anytime for playback - login as a guest and the password is password.
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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