edition 208 newsletter

All you need to know about Maths and English in the post 16- vocational sector.

Great ideas to make English and maths better in post-16

Results taken from the 2016 English and maths survey due to be published next month.  Just look at how much support there is for Functional Skills in schools and indeed in higher apprenticeships at level 3.  nether of these things happen now, maybe they should.

Newsletter editions 207

On-line link here

This week we have analysis of the Ofsted Annual Report related to maths and English in the Post-16 sector with links to some very interesting articles published on the subject and a related article by an FE Expert, Graham Taylor of New College Swindon.

The ETF have also announced their timetable for the Functional Skills Reform Programme and the key objectives of the first stage that is due to be complete by August 2016.

And one final plea to ask you to HAVE YOUR SAY will be published early in the new year so please, if you can spare 10 minutes, click the link to have your say.

Plus did you know that ForSkills customers are fully licenced to freely copy and use the new paper based screeners.  Or everyone can buy them for just 30p each for a full colour 4 page A4 booklet - see below for more info.  

As always, feel free to contact Jonathan Wells, the editor of this newsletter on 0191 3055045 or jonathan@forskills.co.uk

Ofsted Annual Report - Post-16 maths and English

Ofsted published its’ annual review this week

The key parts of the report for the Post-16 sector are pages 49 - 48 (FE) and 67 - 72 (Adult Learning) although i also found some interesting comments about Secondary education too.

Starting with Secondary - page 48 reports on "Skills for Employment" and this page doesn't make good reading for schools with employers and indeed parents still concerned that young people don't have the basic skills, attitudes and behaviours required for work - surely encouraging schools to teach Functional Skills from age 15 would be a step forward here?

Within the sector, the report draws attention to the issues surrounding GCSE re-sits of maths and English in FE Colleges. Bearing in mind it was a different era with a different focus, the report states that of those students who failed to pass GCSE A*-C at KS4 in 2011/12, only 7% then went on to do so in English when they attended an FE College by 2013/14 and just 4% achieved maths.

[FE Week did an excellent job](http://feweek.co.uk/2015/12/01/fe-and-skills-sector-reacts-to-ofsted-201415-annual-report/) of summarising the key points of the Ofsted report for the sector and in this week's edition, FE Week has a [double page feature](http://feweek.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Edition-157-proof-FINAL.pdf) on Maths and English.

ETF consultation on Functional Skills

The long awaited Functional Skills reform programme will start on January 14th and end on April 7th with the first stage of the programme completed by August 2016.

The first stage of the Reform Programme will result in an updated set of National Adult Literacy and Numeracy Standards and a report with policy recommendations for Ministers. This will include:

1.            what levels of Functional Skills are needed for life and   work;

2.            the breadth of skills that the new qualifications should include; and

3.            the number of guided learning hours needed to               successfully achieve Functional Skills for                learners on technical and professional programmes of study, including Apprenticeships.

[Full details here.](http://www.et-foundation.co.uk/news/foundation-announces-first-stage-of-functional-skills-reform-programme/)

Is 35% good enough?

[An expert piece in FE Week](http://feweek.co.uk/2015/11/30/the-principals-office-english-and-maths-challenge/), written by Graham Taylor, the Principal and CEO of New College Swindon.

The article looks at English and maths re-sits in the College sector.

Spending Review - analysis and comment

Spending review - analysis and comment

Let's start with the levy which it seems is genuinely welcomed by most in the sector.

It will affect only larger companies with more than 100-150 employees and a payroll cost of more than £3m per year so almost all colleges and many larger training providers will face this additional cost.  But it can be drawn down by businesses of all sizes and this should stimulate the take-up of apprentices in the SME sector.

In England, It should generate £2.5bn of revenue in the sector which is a large increase on current spending levels of about £1.5bn and supports Nick Boles steering at the AoC last week that Apprenticeships is where the budget is.

Of course, not everyone is pleased, the CBI http://news.cbi.org.uk/news/response-to-autumn-_statement (that represents many large employers) says  “With the levy set at 0.5%, even those businesses most committed to training and development won't be able to recoup their outlay, and it looks like an additional payroll tax.”

"Good news" for the Adult Skills Budget. Despite lots of rumours beforehand, the core ASB will be protected at £1.5bn but £360m of savings will be made from locally-led Area Reviews, along with a possible restructure of funding systems (EFA, SFA) and other departments such as UKCES.  Something similar to the Area Reviews has already been implemented in Scotland and Northern Ireland where larger regional colleges have now been established.

Advanced Learning Loans are being extended.  _“The government will expand tuition fee loans to 19 to 23-year-olds at levels three and four, and 19+ year-olds at levels five and six”._ Will this be additional or replacement funding in the ASB though?

Sixth Form Colleges can benefit from similar treatment of VAT to schools if they become Academies.  The Government also announced they will create 5 National Colleges and will support a new network of Institutes of Technology across the country.

FEWeek carried an excellent article http://feweek.co.uk/2015/11/25/much-feared-budget-looks-positive-for-adult-skills-budget-but-what-could-the-new-19-plus-fe-loans-mean/  with the full statement also available here https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/479749/52229_Blue_Book_PU1865_Web_Accessible.pdf   

The reference areas for the sector are paragraphs 1.170 to 1.179 and 2.80 - found on pages 45 and 46.

Jonathan Wells - ForSkills and Guroo Functional Skills

Major funding changes coming

Major funding changes coming

At the AOC conference earlier this week, Nick Boles spoke about funding and apprenticeships. Whilst everyone (not just this sector), is awaiting news from next week's spending review, a few things became very clear.

Overall budgets are going down - but by how much is still speculation. 

Currently, the Government is spending £1.5bn on Apprenticeships, Colleges get around 35% of this total.  Nick Boles made it clear that this budget will increase over the next 4 years as the Government closes in on the 3m Apprenticeship starts.

The Minister made it clear to the AOC audience that he was expecting Colleges to increase their share of this budget and reduce reliance on sub-contracting. So with overall budgets going down, but Apprenticeship funding protected, budgets in other areas will come under major pressure.

The Minister also said that the way that funding is distributed will also change.  By 2020, the SFA and EFA will not be the key funding source, instead employers, the apprenticeship levy and vouchers will be the source on Apprenticeship funding - this represents a very significant change over the coming years.

Survey

Every year, we survey the thoughts of the post-16 community about English and Maths.  The survey is open now with results expected to be published in the new year.

If you are involved in supporting or teaching learners in Apprenticeships or Traineeships, please have your say, the survey is 20 questions long, and apart from the basics, you can skip the questions where you have no interest or experience.  Above all, your thoughts and opinions will influence how English and maths is delivered in the post-16 sector.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/mathsandenglish2015

Apprenticeship Mix

Changing the Apprenticeship Mix

Everyone will have heard about the Government's apprenticeships target of 3 million new starts.

FE Week are asking the question whether the Government's drive towards these numbers will have a big change in the FE sector.  It's a very fair point, there is a significant difference between the delivery and therefore funding of full time study programmes compared to mainly employer based Apprenticeships and so far, the numbers of 17 year olds on Apprenticeship programmes is low.

A little bit of digging into the recently published SFA stats https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fe-data-library-apprenticeships reveals some interesting stats based on the 2014/15 year just completed.

• Almost 60% of Apprenticeship starts are at level 2, just 4% are at level 4 or above. 
• The most popular sectors are Business, Health and Care, Retail and Engineering making up 90% of all starts.
• 25% of starts are by those aged 16-18, 32% are 19-24 and the largest sector is the 25+ age group with 43% of starts.

Perhaps these statistics do show that the Government sees the growth in the 16-18 sector as being the biggest opportunity?

Newsletter with Government statements, expos, e-learning all to do with English and maths for the post-16 sector.

Edition 203 - Friday October 23rd 2015

This week we have brought together a number of different threads involving Apprenticeships and Functional Skills.

We all know about the 3 million apprenticeship promise and the apprenticeship levy proposals, but now we're also seeing some opposition to activities and plans - we pull together those threads below.

We also have news of a new type of expo event organised by AELP - ForSkills are in the e-learning zone which is entirely appropriate as ForSkills is the ONLY company able to support claims of e-learning success with independent evidence and we have a link to a new "prezi" about that.

As always, feel free to contact Jonathan Wells, the editor of this newsletter on 0191 3055045 or jonathan@forskills.co.uk

Government support, but plenty of criticism too.

An interesting week or two that has seen plenty of Government support for Functional Skills and Apprenticeships mixed with some negativity on both quality and quantity.

Nick Boles, in commissioning the ETF reform programme, makes it totally clear that Functional Skills is here to stay (see our little sample image below) and in a separate address he also provides lots of support for promoting Apprenticeships by Apprentices.

But at the same time, Emily Thornberry of labour was expressing her concern about burger flipping Apprenticeships.

Ofsted then weighed in with their comments, albeit based on quite a small sample, which the BBC reported last week under the headline "devaluing brand".

AELP robustly defended Apprenticeships and issued a statement following their Autumn conference to that effect.

E-learning works

A short on-line "prezi" of the University of Sunderland research on e-learning

Are you prepared for the digital future?

Keeping up to date with the developments in ICT that support digital technology including e-learning and e-assessment is vital to the success of the sector.

On November 5th at the ILEC Conference Centre, London, AELP will hold a new type of event - the #aelptechexpo

Featuring five dedicated zones, a dozen workshops, great speakers and exhibitor briefings, this is an event for your diary.

ETF to manage reform programme for Functional Skills

Functional Skills reform off and running

The Education and Training Foundation have been commissioned by the Government to produce a programme to reform Functional Skills.

The initial report will be delivered to Ministers in August 2016 with the intention of having the new qualifications available for 2018.

Our view is that this is genuinely good news that shows Functional Skills have significant support from the Government. Indeed Nick Boles (BIS Minister) said that "Functional Skills are delivering an employer-recognised level of English and maths skills that help learners into lasting work".

Full details of the announcement.

Changes to Assessments

Functional Skills Changes

English Reading

Source materials will have more resemblance to what candidates see in their daily activities. At level 2 there will be at least three texts to read.

Answers will require more explanations rather than ‘lists’. There will be a greater variety in terms of coverage so that it will be more important to teach skills rather than ‘teach to the test’.

English Writing

There will be less guidance and structure, requiring candidates to provide more extended responses. There will be an emphasis on candidates working in normal ways, so a clarification that grammar and spellcheckers are allowed.

At level 2, candidates with weak SPaG will not necessarily be able to pass purely on the content marks.

Maths

The format of assessments will remain unchanged with three assessments covering number; measures, shape and space; and handling data. There will be reduced guidance within tasks, less scaffolding of questions. There will also be an addition of specific planning and reviewing steps for cdates to demonstrate the effectiveness of their working.

Task 1 (number) will have the most significant changes with a planning step at the start, reduction in guidance throughout and a review at the end of the task. Tasks 2 and 3 will have a similar structure to existing assessments but with reduced guidance.

16 to 19 funding for maths and English

Key changes from previous guidance are:

Where targets for 2014/15 were missed by less than 5%, no funding deduction will be made. Outside of this 5% tolerance, the funding reduction per student will be reduced from 100% to 50% of the national funding rate.

The Government have said that 97% of students without GCSE A*-C did an approved course (typically either Functional Skills or GCSE re-sit) in 2014/15 which means that 35,000 students did not.  Institutions who did not fully comply will also be required to complete a survey to say why and what they are doing to ensure it doesn't happen again.

Almost all Apprenticeship programmes retain Functional Skills as an option, as does adult learning courses.  The full guidance is here.

Can it be 8 years since I wrote this

"Make them important"  -an article from August 2007 by Jonathan Wells

"One of the key reasons why Key Skills is a cinderella subject at college is that students, staff and employers don't see them as important. Students don't need to do Key Skills, nor pass them (MA excepted). A level students at school don't even do them.

With Functional Skills we all have the opportunity to make them important. So let's make sure that EVERY student understands them, EVERY employer knows what they are and ALL college staff know why they are important.

If it was me I would treat Functional Skills like a brand new consumer brand and go about marketing it in the same way - viral marketing, product launch, recognition adverts, supermarket sampling, free trials, simple marketing messages."

Have things changed that much?

Newsletter out today

This week's packed newsletter is being delivered at a different time - an experiment on our part.

This week we have a summary of the Government and Employers Skills Agenda and news of a recent OECD report into the use of technology in schools which makes for very interesting reading, not so much for what it says, but for it doesn't!

A reminder than the 2015 survey is running and your valuable input is sought plus ForSkills is recruiting for a Customer Engagement Officer with a salary guide of £30-40K - watch the video for more details.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUndgahy9OY

As always, feel free to contact Jonathan Wells, the editor of this newsletter on 0191 3055045 or jonathan@forskills.co.uk 

Job anyone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUndgahy9OY

Watch and apply!

Customer Engagement Officer.

Paper based screeners - absolutely brilliant value

Brand new and amazing value paper based ForSkills and Guroo Screeners – Full colour, 4 page A4 paper based screener for maths, English and ICT designed to produce an accurate level in just 10 minutes. Our bulk buying means we can ship from stock, and with prices lower than it would cost you to print in-house.  

events coming up.

EVENTS

A quick summary of some key sector events planned over the next few weeks:

Wednesday 23rd Sept - Capita Apprenticeships and Traineeships Conference in London

Friday 2nd October - GW Partnership Skills for Life event at Wooton-under-Edge, Glos.

Thursday 15th October - AELP Special Interest group Functional Skills in London

Tuesday 20th October - AELP national conference in Coventry

Tuesday 17th November - AOC Annual Conference in Birmingham

Survey results - early findings

With almost 100 completed responses already, early results are promising. More than 70% of you value this newsletter and as a good or excellent source of news which is very gratifying. More importantly early results from the survey also show:

• More than 50% of you think that mandatory GCSE re-sits are a “terrible idea”, whereas 65% think schools should offer Functional Skills from year 10 for learners with vocational ambitions.
• A surprising 90% are confident that Functional Skills level 2 is a rigorous qualification, only 70% think the same about GCSE. Almost 60% report that learners enjoy Functional Skills, the equivalent GCSE number is 40%.
• NCFE will be pleased that the top requests for additional services from Awarding Organisations are “free initial assessment and diagnostic tools” and “faster results turnaround”.

Some great quotes too:

• “I am seeing more and more 16-19 year olds who can ‘perform’ maths skills but cannot apply them to everyday situations – how is this preparing them for working life?”
• “Expecting the FE to upgrade students to at least a C in one year of teaching (when schools have not succeeded in 5) is creating lots of barriers to learning”
• “The choice of Functional Skills or GCSE should be appropriate for the learner, not dictated by funding”
• “Recent Government changes to grade boundaries at GCSE have made the qualification worthless to employers”
• “End this GCSE re-sit madness – it’s destroying the confidence of students”

The link is here https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/mathsandenglish2015 please take 10 minutes and add your thoughts and opinions - they do count and they are important.

Please complete the 5th annual survey for post-16 English and maths

It's that time of year again - time to have your say about English and maths in the 5th annual survey about FunctionalSkills and GCSE.

The survey covers familiar ground and we've timed it at 10-15 minutes - only the first 5 demographic and 1 question at the end are "must complete", the rest of the 20 questions are all optional and cover areas such as:

• Qualification routes
• Awarding organisations
• Confidence in Functional Skills and GCSE
• E-Portfolio use
• Initial assessment, diagnostics and resource providers
• Confidence and future thoughts

As usual, we're offering to make a charity donation for each completed survey and one lucky respondent will win a fully stocked picnic hamper to share with colleagues as a thank you and indeed incentive for taking part.

This is the 5th annual survey, in the past we've had well over 1000 responses and we know that the results inform and influence policy makers and have certainly contributed to decisions in the sector.  

The link is here https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/mathsandenglish2015https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/mathsandenglish2015 please take 10 minutes and add your thoughts and opinions - they do count and they are important.

September 2nd newseltter - e-learning report and 2015 survey

The newsletter returns after a few weeks off and with so much going on, we expect to send an update every week during September.

This week we focus on the launch of the 2015 survey, a chance to see Jonathan Wells (the newsletter editor) in action on live TV and a reminder for everyone in the sector about this report - independent evidence that just 15 hours of e-learning use results in an AVERAGE improvement in success of 9%. See below to request your copy of the report.

Plus did you know that many of the high quality ForSkills and Guroo skills videos are now available free of charge via ad-supported content on YouTube.  Subscribe to the ForSkills channel here and you'll always have the latest. 

As always, feel free to contact Jonathan Wells, the editor of this newsletter on 0191 3055045 or jonathan@forskills.co.uk 

Improve Functional Skills success rates by 9%

Independent evidence released that just 15 hours of e-learning improves Functional Skills success rates by 9%

The report below, first published in FENews, highlights the direct link between the use of e-learning resources and improvements in outcome success. The report compares two groups of students - those who only did the assessment and diagnostic test and those who then continued to use e-learning resources on-line. The results showed that just 15 hours of e-learning use improves average results by 9%. Please click here and request a full copy of the report.

GCSE - problem or solution for post-16?

Politics and GCSE are this week's theme.  It started when Ofqual released a clear and pretty unambiguous diagram that showed GCSE 9-1 level 4 was equivalent to grade C. But then Nicky Morgan said level 5 should be considered a good pass.

And then Tristram Hunt of Labour questioned whether the whole thing should be reviewed during this parliament before the CBI finally weighed in last week with direct comments saying GCSEs should be scrapped within 5 years.

Read the full article by Jonathan Wells of ForSkills here.

New GCSE grades

Confused about the new GCSE grades?

Nicky Morgan today said that the new grade 5 would be equivalent to a “good pass” at GCSE.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-33139954

But just 2 weeks ago, Ofqual released this diagram which clearly suggests that grade 4 is equivalent to a grade C, the grade the Government uses for a “good pass”.  https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/431441/2015-06-02-postcard-new-gcse-grading-structure.pdf

So under the new grading system we appear now to have a “pass = 4 = current  C” and “good pass = 5 = top C”.  So which is it?  I suppose it will depend on how Ofsted and/or the Government decide on which grade will be used in league tables, thereby determining where schools are placed in relative performance.

And where does this leave Functional Skills, surely if grade 5 becomes the standard, then it makes the case even stronger for Functional Skills to be the qualification of choice for vocational learners and those for whom a practical qualification in English and maths is better than a fail at GCSE. 

A Level 2 Functional Skills pass will always be seen by employers as much more valuable than a GCSE fail.

Post-16 maths and English

Quite a lot to cover in this week's Maths andEnglish newsletter for the post-16 sector, much of it to do with GCSE!

GCSE is taking on ever more importance, particularly in FE Colleges where learners on full time study programmes with an existing grade D GCSE are expected to keep re-sitting until they pass.  We have two reports about this, a link to Radio 4's Today programme and report from SGS College published in the Bristol Post.

Are your students spending hours doing "dry as ditchwater" GCSE assessments?  Don't, try the newly re-designed and re-launched GCSE assessment from ForSKills - details below.

Capita are running a Post-16 Maths and English conference in London on 8th July - we have links to this. 

This week's free videos are below - maths is all about Percentages and English is suffixes - both key parts of the GCSE curriculum too!

As always, feel free to contact Jonathan Wells, the editor of this newsletter on 0191 3055045 or jonathan@forskills.co.uk 

Free week in the newsletter

This week is "free week" and we feature lots of free to access and free to use resources for GCSE and Functional Skills in maths and English.

Join NCFE and The Learning Curve Group for a "Queen's Speech Webinar" delivered by sector expert Beej Kaczmarczyk.

We've also added free links to GCSESCREENER and some great BBC Bitesize resources and for those who are prepared to go that extra mile and follow @ForSkills, then a free poster awaits.

And don't forget the links to this weeks free ICT (IF functions) and free maths (mean and range) videos. 

As always, feel free to contact Jonathan Wells, the editor of this newsletter on 0191 3055045 or jonathan@forskills.co.uk. 

Week of May 13th English and maths newsletter

This week's newsletter has a brief political update taking into account post election announcements and news about the international comparison OECD "PISA" tests and where the UK sits in comparison.

We also have news of a new e-learning hours report that came about as a result of a customer request and some great free stuff from ForSkills - learner journey posters for English and maths. 

And free videos this week - mean & range plus @if functions - our first free ICT video. 

As always, feel free to contact Jonathan Wells, the editor of this newsletter on 0191 3055045 or jonathan@forskills.co.uk. 

In the news

In this week's newsletter we have a really good summary of all the major parties manifesto positions in this sector written and published by AELP.  At just 8 pages long,it details all the promises by policy area.

Learning at Work Week is nearly here too - also this week is a new feature - about "features".  In the coming weeks we'll cover additional areas such as GCSE assessment, e-learning hours reports and learner progression analysis. This week we start with spiky profiles!

And did you win - the results of the £250,000+ e-portfolio prize draw!  

As always, feel free to contact Jonathan Wells, the editor of this newsletter on 0191 3055045 or jonathan@forskills.co.uk. 

Click here for the newsletter

e-portfolio competition winners

Competition winners

We had a wonderful response to the ForSkills £250,000+ e-portfolio prize draw.  By now, every winner should have received an email from jonathan@forskills.co.uk detailing their prize and how to claim it.  And even if you didn’t win, please still  do look out for an email with a great offer.

Winners from the FE sector include (in no particular order) City and Islington, Uxbridge, Epping Forest, Banbury & Bicester, Central Sussex, Liverpool, Oxford, Highlands, Mid Kent, Peterborough, Westminster Kingsway, Newcastle under Lyme, Bromley, Chesterfield, Guernsey, South Cheshire, Cirencester, Cornwall and Wakefield.

Winners from the WBL sector include (again in no particular order) Circa 2007, Qube, Chameleon, BT, GAP, Middleton Murray, Alliance, Need2Succeed, Focus, Fortitude, ESG Group, TBG Learning, Training Associates, Smart T&R and Aspiration.

Congratulations to all and many thanks to everyone who took part – we enjoyed it so much there’s a very good chance we’ll do it again too!

SFA approved quals - Functional Skills

SFA approved qualifications for 2015/16

The SFA has published a list of more than 3000 qualifications including 180 Functional Skills qualifications from Awarding Organisations including new entrants into the market VTVT and Ascentis.  The new list is under the new simplified Funding Regime which essentially means that funding (subject to employer contribution) is:

£941 for Functional Skills Entry Level maths

£724 for all Functional Skills English and Level  1/2 maths

£336 for all Functional Skills ICT

£811 for GCSE (9-1) Maths and English Language

£811 for GCSE (A*-C) maths and English variants

A little tip to make it easy to find things.  I use Excel and highlighted the main database (A3:S3218). Then choose data from the top menu and then filter.  This adds a filter to each column and by clicking on the icon at the top of each column, you can see all the column entries and filter immediately to find what you're interested in.  Hope this helps.   

Is 63% pass rate bad?

It isn't in my view, it shows that things are working the way they should be and that Functional Skills has rigour and isn’t the easy option.

Lets be clear about the process too, learners are almost always entered at the level above that indicated by an initial assessment so 63% clearly shows progression - often in a few months instead of 2 years - our research shows an average time from initial assessment to qualification of about 8 months.
Compared to GCSE where the re-sit pass rate for the same group of 16-19 year olds is about 7% – Functional Skills 63% first time pass rate shows a significant improvement.
And unlike GCSE which has just two windows of opportunity per year, Functional Skills can be re-taken pretty much on demand.  63% is the first time pass rate, I believe the stats show that this increases to more than 80% when further attempts are included.

Functional Skills is the qualification of choice for employers - something that the ETF results showed recently.

So lets celebrate significant progress instead of wondering why not everyone passes - Functional Skills isn't Key Skills!

ESOL?

EFL, ESOL, ESL learners?

Do you support learners in ESOL and related areas?  Have you seen these digital graded readers for EFL, ESL and ESOL - a solution that is a little different for your ESOL learners. Read Listen Learn is an online extensive reading service that helps teachers/tutors run reading projects so learners can enjoy improving their English by reading for pleasure. The service is based on a digital library of over 150 graded readers, including fiction adapted from works by authors from places as diverse as the UK, the US, Russia and India and non-fiction articles on subjects including history, science, crime and sport.  New titles are added regularly; they are all illustrated and include glossaries and social tools to aid collaboration. Activity is tracked and available to enable progress monitoring. Click here to be taken to Read Listen Learn free trial page.

If I was Skills Minister then .....

If I was Minister for Skills looking after post 16 English, maths and Functional Skills,then after the election I would ...... have your say here.

Making maths and English work for all.

Making maths and English work for all.

The report commissioned by Nick Boles has been published and, probably much to the surprise of Nick Boles, the report shows wide support for Functional Skills.  Sure there is room for improvement but that is neither a surprise nor a problem, after all Functional Skills are now approaching 8 years old and keeping them relevant and fresh is vital.  In summary:

• Functional Skills are gaining widespread recognition and employers who know about them like them and the approach they embody.
• Functional Skills benefit learners because they focus on the skills that are valued by employers. 
• Functional Skills are a good basis on which to build.

One of key things I drew from the report is that employers who know about Functional Skills certainly value them in the world of work – more than 87% say they are very or fairly useful, leaving just 13% saying that Functional Skills are not very or not at all useful.    

So the top level challenge for Government is almost certainly to improve the number of Employers who know about Functional Skills – the report quotes 47% of employers who are aware of Functional Skills.  A further top level challenge is not to change for the sake of change as Functional Skills are “not broken”.

My view of the recommendations of the report include

• There is a clear need for rigorous but flexible qualifications that show a learner has mastered practical and applied English and maths skills
• The standards, content and assessment methods of Functional Skills should be reviewed to ensure they remain relevant to the needs of employers
• Non-GCSE English and maths qualifications should be rationalised to ensure greater public and employer recognition, the inference being to put greater support behind Functional Skills
• The purpose and value of Functional Skills should be the focus of a publicity campaign to employers to improve awareness and understanding with simple, consistent and well-evidenced messages and it is important to avoid promoting any perception that Functional Skills are a consolation prize awarded by a GCSE focused system
• A minor change of name to use “Functional Maths” and “Functional English” would make it clear to employers that learners have gained practical literacy and numeracy qualifications   
• Support for teachers/tutors to improve their maths and English skills needs to continue.

For those wishing to dig a little further into the data, this document was also published. Much longer, more detailed but definitely worth a read - and we're honoured to see that our research (the 2015 Functional Skills Annual Survey) has been referenced as a source. 

Newsletter edition 182 for post-16 maths and English

It's been such a busy period that this weeks newsletter is all about review, taking stock and planning for the future.

In terms of review and taking stock, we have links to the last two major conferences, plus news from BIS/DfE about a range of policy positions and a link to conform the recently announced Apprenticeship wage review.

Looking to the future, ForSkills has a deserved reputation for offering a cohesive family of products with a consistent user interface and clear and simple upgrade paths.  A good time, therefore, to remind readers of the ForSkills product offer.  

And finally, don't forget to enter the "celebrating 10 years" ForSkills e-portfolio prize draw with more than £250,000 of vouchers up for grabs.  Simply click here to enter.

As always, feel free to contact Jonathan Wells, the editor of this newsletter on 0191 3055045 or jonathan@forskills.co.uk and if you'd like to comment on the new style of newsletter, including the picture to the right - please do! 

DoE and BIS left hand and right hand

The Government, through a Dept of Education spokesperson says this.

"We are replacing the system which rewarded schools to push pupils to scrape a C and moving to a new system which encourages high-achievers and recognises schools for the progress made by all pupils."

At exactly the same time we have the Dept for BIS making it a condition of funding and saying that anyone who misses scraping a C must do GCSE re-sits until they do scrape a C instead of the far more practical and useful Functional Skills option!

It just really doesn't work does it?

A good newsletter this week - Functional Skills finds support!

Education and Training Foundation research - emerging findings

Hot off the press, we have the emerging findings of the very recent research into making maths and English work for all.  They are: Employers want practical and applied maths and English skills Engagement and motivation are critical to successful learning in maths and English Alternative routes are needed for some young people and adults to achieve Level 2 in maths and English Functional Skills level 2 should be an alternative route, not a stepping stone and its purpose clarified and widely communicated. The consultation ran until 27th February 2015. Full findings will be published in March. We can't wait to see the full results! The latest political position on Apprenticeships To round off this weeks edition of the maths and English newsletter, we thought it would be good to remind readers of what the Minister and Shadow Minister think about Apprenticeships. For Nick Boles video at the Apprenticeships 4 England conference, click here. For Ed Milliband's speech about "the forgotten 50%", click here.