|
|
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.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment