April 30th - the Functional Skills
newsletter
We attended an AELP meeting about
Functional Skills and an Ofsted HMI gave a really interesting session on findings
since September. We've summarised our thoughts in this newsletter and
will do the webinar this week on the same subject.
We've also picked up on the addition of
video resources to the Functional Skills marketplace, a reminder about events
coming up in the next couple of months and special offers and product
announcements from Guroo.
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
Ofsted and Functional Skills
The bullet points below are taken from
a presentation by an HMI from Ofsted to AELP members at the Functional Skills
Special Interest Group.
- Getting an accurate initial assessment is
really important. And note that there can be big differences depending on
which IA is used. We now have anoymised but fully independent
research that compares the rigorous Guroo IA with another popular IA.
Please call Jonathan Wells if you'd like to discuss this on 0191 305
5045.
- Using the information to make sure that
learners are "stretched" to work at a challenging level suggest
that an E3 initial assessment should mean a Level 1 course.
- The motivation of learners and how much they
understand the importance of Functional Skills not only as part of their
course, but in th wider context too is also judged by Ofsted.
Attendance rates, withdrawal rates and student interviews are all
used to assess this.
- Ofsted are looking at assessing English and
maths (and ICT) independently and i every area of learning. Para 160
refers to how progress in English and maths is monitored , reviewed and
marked carefully by all tutors, not just responsible for Functional
Skills.
- How strategies are developed to support the
improvement of different groups of learners is taken into account.
Part of this is also about staff qualifications and experience and
access to staff who have above level 2 in maths, a particular area of
concern for Ofsted.
- Ofsted are keen to see leadership ensure that
providers have a clear strategy for developing and implementing good
teaching and learning resources and that learning activities should be
"practical, purposeful, engaging and memorable".
- Teaching to the test isn't something Ofsted
expect to see and they look for constructive individual feedback that supports
further learning to re-enforce this.
This week’s webinar is based on the
HMI's comments, if you'd like to join - see below
Events, videos and
comments
A reminder that Guroo, along with other
leading suppliers will be attending the "All Things Functional" event
in Birmingham on June 14th organised again by EMSKills. The last one was
great, the workshops for this one look great too. Simply click here to go to the events page for more details.
For those who follow the linked in
Functional Skills groups, this week it was about videos! The JGA group
posted a Functional Skills maths video seeking comments. Watch it here.
As an experiment to gauge interest,
Guroo have placed some of their Functional Skills videos on the elearning marketplace site.
Note these (plus the rest of the collection) are available free of charge
to Guroo customers, so if you are a Guroo customer, there is no need to buy
them. But if you aren't, well, it's a good place to se them. We also have a 2 minute showreel of clips now available on You Tube.
And in other news, we picked this up
last week.
City and Guilds have run into some criticism
over their decision to "export" Functional Skills papers to India to
be marked. It's all to with speed of turnaround as well as costs but with
more and more companies "re-importing" activities from India back to
the UK, will it go down well with C&G's customers? Click here for the Telegraph story.
5 key
product announcements from Guroo and a promise!
- Paper based initial assessment and diagnostic
now available
- Off-line initial assessment and diagnostic
available this week
- Paper based ICT Level Checker now available
and free to all Guroo customers
- Guroo 3.0 now released
- 20 x tutorial videos now live and free to all
Guroo customers.
- Coming soon with Guroo 3.1 - Exam Practice,
revised ICT Initial Assessment and core curriculum tags.
And for orders in April and May only
- we are automatically adding 25% extra licences absolutely free to your
account.
Wednesday Webinar at 4.00pm
"Functional Skills and
Ofsted" - a summary of a presentation by
Ofsted about how they judge Functional Skills with notes and comments by
Jonathan Wells. We did a similar one a few months ago and it was very
popular so a good time once again to look at the key issues.
"Functional Skills and
Ofsted" is aimed at both customers and
those thinking of becoming customers. 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.
Guroo group and user admin
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