Ofsted GCSE Maths comments

Widely reported today are problems with Maths teaching in secondary schools.  Only half of all lessons are good enough according to ofsted who go on to say that one of the main reasons is that lessons are often too focussed on process and not on application.

Music to my ears frnakly - that's the whole point of functional skills, application of skills and it means that if we can get the teaching and practice of functional skills right, it can make a huge difference to the overall teaching of Maths.

I'm off to develop some examples of maths applications!

 

GCSE Everyday Stuff

So we're on the starting blocks and I read a really interesting piece from Tony Attwood at Hamilton House entitled GCSE Everyday Stuff. It's very relevant to how we approcah Functional Skills as part of the new 14-19 curriculum at www.guroo.co.uk Here's a extract from Tony

"At first sight these exams appear to be similar to GCSEs in the same subjects. But there is a subtle difference, a difference that has led some to rename Functional Skills as GCSEs in Everyday Stuff.

It’s an apt title for, as every question that appears in the sample exam papers made available by Edexcel reveals, students not only have to have the prescribed knowledge, they also have to know how to apply it.

Such a development will be welcomed by those in business who have complained in the past that students leave school unable to apply their knowledge of maths, English and IT to the workplace."

Now I know what ....means

And part of the amplification document (see previous post) is the glossary. I have chosen some entries wich just make it all easier for all of us. I always wanted to know how to briefly descirbe a text message without using any jargon and in less than 200 words.

Web page: A unit of
information from a
website that can be
addressed using its URL.

Text message:
Sometimes known as
SMS (short message
service), available on
digital GSM networks
allowing text messages to
be sent and received via
the network operator’s
message centre to a
phone, or from the
Internet, using a so-called
SMS gateway website. If
the phone is powered off
or out of range,
messages are stored in
the network and are
delivered at the next
opportunity.

Amplification of the standards

I got all excited this morning when I opened up the 14-19 newsletter and saw that Amplification of the Funstional Skills standards hidden at the bottom of the newsletter.

Great, let's read it now I thought - 6 hours later and 148 pages and the amplification is now clear! I really do feel sorry for those people who have to plough through this - I mean, what has to be 148 pages long? It's simply too long to make sense and certainly so long that the majority of practitioners will not read it.

So if you're a teacher in a school who has just been asked to teach Functional Skills and you ask for guidance ....... you can see where I'm going.

Scare stories again

Front page of the TES this week brings another scare story.
Becuase the Diploma says that work experience should be in the line of learning "where possible" it is possible that experience may be outside of the Diploma area.
But the reality is that it's unlikely as Connexions, Schools and Colleges will be wanting to get youngsters experience in the right area and this clause is there to cover for problem areas where it is difficult to get the right experience.

The bigger issue is probably that with 10 days minimum instead of the 5 days now, and a need to get the right experience, Connexions will face a large increase in workload which i know (from talking to heads of the service) are not being funded.

Another issue are the Health and Safety requirements of areas such as Construction. If it really is a requirement that every employee that comes into contact with a student (could be everyone) has to have CRB clearance, then no-one in Construction could ever have a student on site due to the transient nature of many contractors. Now that really is a problem in my view.

Choosing the right path with the right subject

Today the Daily Mail has an interesting piece. In typical Daily Mail style, it's written as a bit of a middle England scare story but underneath the headlines, it's relevant and actually nails the problem quite well.

The Universities (Russel Group. LSE, Cambridge are some named) have effectively black listed some of the A levels regarded as soft options as counting towards offers. Subjects like ICT, Leisure & Recreation, Health and Social Care, Travel and Tourism, Media amongst others and I'm honestly not picking on these subjects. I mention them because coincidentally these are in the the first or second round of Diplomas.
But the same Universities have said (probably with a certain amount of reticence and perhaps even Government pressure) that they will accept level 3 Diplomas as a route to a degree.

So here we are for a theory.

If you are a student about to set off on your level 3 course.
Choose A levels for academic or traditional subjects such as Sciences, English, Maths.
Choose Diplomas for Vocational subjects such as Media, Leisure, Health & Social Care, ICT, Travel & Tourism.

But don't try to do A levels in Diploma subjects and should Diplomas ever come out for Maths, stick to the A levels.

If this all works though, it'll make it easier all round!

Useful English and Maths

Here's an off the wall thought.
Instead of calling things Functional Skills why not call it what it is:

USEFUL ENGLISH AND MATHS

or perhaps

USEFUL STUFF WITH WORDS AND NUMBERS

or for short

USEFUL STUFF

I've got a level two in "useful stuff" - go on sounds great doesn't it.
And the kids would love it, at least my kids would.

Q: What did you do at school today
A: Just useful stuff

J

Diplomas are a vehicle for a shift in learning

“We are ready for a shift in learning – Diplomas offer a vehicle for this. It is a vehicle that is a juggernaut, but which does not need slowing but needs steering”
A quote from the letters page in the TES from Dr Barry Wratten, Headteacher of Churchill Community School in North Somerset.

Sort of sums it up very well really!

75% of schools offering Diplomas - really?

DCFS have said that nearly 75% of schools and 88% of colleges will offer the new diplomas in September.
Now that's a big number and in my experience, it seems to be a lot bigger (in schools) than I find on the ground!
It also doesn't check out with the stats on the excellent "Diploma Video" which quotes 40,000 learners across 1300 institutions.
I reckon that's about a third of secondary schools.

Mind it would be great if it was 75% of schools!

The New Curriculum

So the announcement this week of major revisions to the GCSE programme as well as the extended Diplomas.
And another mailing from KSSP reminding me that Key Skills continues until 2010 only - It is starting to feel like a new curriculum all round.

In fact I've registered www.thenewcurriculum.co.uk - suggestions as to what I should put on this site?

LSN

Just recieved an email from the KSSP part of LSN this morning saying that most support ends in March. But not a lot on what takes over other than a link to the excellence gateway - strange!

Astonishing press coverage of 16 year old school leavers

In todays Daily Mail.
p12 - pupils in big schools are doomed to failure - a focus on those 78000 pupils who leave without even the basic qualifications.
p19 - tories pledge to get Jeremy Kyle generation into jobs - main focus of the story is dissaffected young men and the growth of NEETS
p24 - head of eton calls for overhaul of GCSE - do 6 instead of 16 plus a range of other interetsing stuff. You don't have to test and examine everything.
p29 - the Hair and Beauty diploma that doesn't actually involve cutting hair - comment of the new diplomas.

Four stories, all focussed on 16 year olds and with a clear tendency towards fising the problems of low achievement.

Using games for learning

An interesting poll by YouGov on behalf of RM shows how something can be spun in each direction.

RM says "There is a strongly expressed interest in using these for learning, with 30% saying they would like to use video games to help them learn, 20% an MP3 player and 18% social networking sites".

Now I'm quite diappointed at some of these figures. Given that virtaully every teenager has a games player of some description, only 1 in 3 want to use it for learning and an even lower number for sites such as MSN.

There's been loads of talk about how msn and bebo and myspace can be used for learning, perhaps all of us "advisers/adults/teachers/commentators" shouldn't bother as I think the spin on this story is that teenagers don't want to use their technologies for learning. Games are games they appear to say, now leave me alone whilst I play!

Extra Money?

A small piece linked from the QCA newsletter said that DSFS was giving an EXTRA £1000 for each student doing a Diploma.
Click in the link to the LA website and it shows that it varies from £780 to £1280 with some LA's getting less and some more refelcting the cost of delivery.
All the info I sw related to level 1 and level 2 at 14-16 though - even though it says that funding for 16-19 has been announced.

Never mond - and extra £1000 to support delivery of Diplomas - got to be good news methinks.

Diploma Positioning by the DCFS

I feel quite heartened by the press.
Headlines like
Ministers make Diplomas a Priority
Stop recommended A levels
The furture of A levels can not be guaranteed

OK, so most of these are sort typical daily mail type "when I was a lad" headlines but the underlying sentiment I think is good.

Things like Key Skills pretty much failed in the market becuase they weren't made imporatnt. The opposite occurred when qualifications like the GNVQ IT was awarded 4 GCSE pass status, it became so popular with schools that it cuased it's own downfall.

So talking up Diplomas is a good thing in my view, and blogs are opinions after all, just hope it doesn't get overvalued and therefore go the way of GNVQ.

Promising though - jonathan

BETT Show

Lots of QCA led discussion about FS at BETT.
There was even what amounted to a stand up argument in one of the presentations I was in. Quite rightly, the QCA representative was questionsed about the Drama diploma and how teachers could get studnets to "commercially rpesent their show".
QCA said - nothing to do with us
Exam Board (don't know which one) - haven't htought about that yet.
Drama teacher - but I have to start teaching this in Sept
QCA - not my brief

Stalemate! even after he asked it several times, quite funny really.

See the Key skills post about software at BETT, frankly their wasn't much -that's it!

Evidence that creative use of ILT helps disengaged learners

This piece has been extracted from the excellent Merlin John's blog. www.merlinjohnonline.net

Pro0f that Creative ICT helps the most disengaged learners

There are some basic truths in education and here’s one. You can’t learn or teach successfully unless you are prepared to take chances: and you can’t take chances unless you have confidence.And the relevance of this? A new study, carried out on Becta’s behalf in 10 UK special schools by University of Liverpool researchers, found that creative use of ICT is a powerful tool in helping children with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties to experience the successes that can give them the confidence to engage with their teachers and their education.

Enhanced engagement, motivation, co-operation, collaboration and achievement were all observed.It’s something that has long been obvious to some educators, but it took headteacher at Rush Hall School, John d’Abbro, who has pioneered creative work with his own students using state-of-the-art ICT tools from Apple for digital video, animation, music and podcasting, to set up a national research project with support from Apple and Canon.

And he is delighted that some of the insights he has gained from his own experiences have been confirmed by the findings of the researchers. It is backed up with extensive, revealing video interviews with learners, teachers and parents (see student Samantha Bell, above, on her Anne Frank project, and teacher Jan Kirkham, below, on the importance of self-esteem).

(Just go to the blog to see the videos ..... jonathan)

FS - bit different to what we thought?

Here's an interesting one. We had a get together of custoemrs in the office the other day and one of the big things talked aboiut was the the type of student that would do functional skills.

I was very surprsied to find out that the construction diploma was actually much more acadmic that you'd imagine. I would have thought (and maybe this was my prejudice) that it would focus on practical crfat skills and would appeal to those studnets who want to become skilled tradesman - after all there seems to a huge demand for this.

But the general feeling was that it was much more academic and aimed at the designer/architect/drawing end of the market.

If this is the case then it needs to appeal to those students who traditionally wouldn't consider a vocational stuydy route at post 16 - and what about those studnets who do want to become skills tradesman?

I feeling v ery slightly uneasy about this - expectations have been set and I don't know if they will be met.

Functional skills search for twice as much as key skills

functional skills
1,577
76
£4.38

key skills
695
5
£0.17

E2E
353
3
£0.15

14-19 diploma
463
2
£0.08

14-19 curriculum
84
0


I know that I’m sad but look at the stats above and partiocualrly what people search for in Google.

Originally Key Skills took the outright lead as I mentioned in an earlier post but the last couple of weeks have seen an explosion in searches for diploma and funcationals skills.

Comments welcomed!

Browns October speech in my view

"We need not just education reform but culture change."

"Opportunities are only meaningful if people have the capabilities, resources and the aspirations to make the most of them. So inequalities in aspiration and capability must be tackled." He talked as much about involving parents, increasing take-up of apprenticeships and university places and bottom-up development, yes he mentioned closing schools as well but it wasn’t the core of the speech.

"The very idea of personalising learning is about helping children become more aspirational: that we identify talent, we shape education around the unique needs and aspirations of the child, and we engage pupils in their own learning - giving them a thirst for education and knowledge that will stay with them long after they have left school." Is that a new definition for personalised learning perhaps?"

"This is my belief: that world-class performance comes from consistent brilliance from teachers in every classroom; professionals who seek continuous improvement, who teach better lessons tomorrow than they did yesterday because they are learning all the time; who when a pupil falls behind don't assume it is a lack of ability but instead ask - 'how could I teach that material better to enable my pupil to master it?'"

People occassionally tell me “I don’t need anything new or innovative because we’re really good now” perhaps I need a better answer than OK then!