Big News - The School Report Card

This is very big news if you're me and expecting Functional Skills to be the biggest thing since GCSE replaced O levels.

Remember that announcement on April 2nd by Jim Knight that the hurdle of passing functional skills was being removed from GCSE.  Also remember that I said the Government was determined to make this work.

Well, I write to DCFS and I have a response - let me quote

"Therefore schools will have to teach functional skills in order to maintain and improve their results"  OK we knew that but here's the rub for those who were thinking functional skills was being sidelined

"The Government will strongly encourage schools to give young people opportunities to enter and achieve free standing tests in functional skills.....These will be reflected in finalising the Report Card which will replace performance tables and any associated indicators......make sure that there is a strong incentive that reflects our view that it is valuable for young people to do functional skills as well as GCSE.

I'm pretty happy with that, as you can imagine!

Budgets and funding

this is a personal view only but i think that this year and next year will be fine for funding across the education sector.

Yes, there are some problems with new college buildings, BSF in schools is a tricky one to manage especially when it comes to ICT, but I don't think that schools and colleges need worry too much about losing money from teaching students or having un funded courses.

Education budgets are set in advance and I think it will be April 2011 before we see any changes to the commitments made.  This will be the first chance a potential new government has of changing things.  

At that point, there must a general tightening of budgets and i don't think education will escape this at all.

Budget funding

Seems like ages since I did a posting - been a busy old week at work!

Good to see that the funding issues surrounding increased numbers of students expected to take part on post-16 eductaion seemed to have been solved with extra funding annocuned in the budget.

Must admit that it was expected, but good to see it happening nevertheless.  Especially important for me as my youngest daughter will be in this group come September I hope.

LSC deciding on the answer before it asks the question

I've just had an immensely frustrating and unrewarding telephone interview from LSC.  It would take 10 minutes they said (it actually took an hour), it would inform the LSC on training requirements of small business (it didn't because there was nowhere to add what my requirements are) and it would influence skills development (it won't because the questions were loaded to protect the LSC).

Questions like .... Because of the recession, are you spending more or less on training   ... are loaded because whether you spend more or less on training is not as a result of the recession.

And then one has to ask why LSC are doing this, I suspect it's to justify an existence which is seriously under threat.  Perhaps they should be spending the money they have spent on this ridiculous survey on funding some post 16 education.

The Apprentice - functional maths got her!

Watched the apprentice last night - love this show!

Paula Jones - long wavy red hair - got fired.

Did they get the right one - they did becuase she simply couldn't estimate the numbers.  Confusing 3% with 3g cost the team about £700 and was the difference, all the difference, between winning and losing.  

Why comment about this becuase this is what Functional Mathematics is all about.  Being Functional means knowing when something feels wrong.  You don't have to be an expert and get it right every time, you do have to know when to check though and she didn't.  

It reminds me of the time when many years ago I was interviewing for a sales person and the person I interviewed was great, personable, bright, good presentation but she did a numeracy test and was so awful it was impossible to believe.  So back to the interview and simple questions like what's 10% discount on a £20,000 order showed no understanding about numbers.  She didn't get the job - having no confidence with simple numbers can only ever be a disaster waiting to happen.

Scare stories from LSC

Easter brings the conference season and the end of the Government Financial Year together so suddenly we see lots reports and press activity which all seem to be bringing forward scare stories such as

LSC promises things it then can't deliver

Diplomas dropped because the LSC has run out of money

No space or money for sixth formers

I think that at the moment, I'm treating all these things as scare stories.  Many are forced on us because the LSC has to do something by 31st March when in reality it is nowhere near having the numbers on which to base things.Or the Government announcing 50,000 students on diplomas when clearly that's just an estimate.  

Lets just wait a week or two and see what happens after the next bank holiday in May before jumping to conclusions.

Responses from the announcement last week

These are a selection of quotes from the responses to the change to de-link Functional Skills from GCSE

does this mean i have to enter pupils for the ict functional skills, 

is it now just an extra and we don't if we wish not to have to enter pupils at all even in 2010 Louise

I think that the latest announcement will be the kiss of death for functional skills and will totally vindicate those Headteachers who have been sitting on the fence with the whole 14-19 agenda because they think that ‘it will all go away’! 

…. The point regarding the report card is pertinent as it will very much depend on how this is structured  ……

….. Ten years or so ago when Key Skills were introduced in Further Education, the rationale for their introduction was that employers when employing school leavers discovered a severe lack of basic skills, especially with numeracy, literacy and IT. When attending the first Functional Skills seminar six months ago, exactly the same words were used to explain the introduction of Functional Skills; presumably the last ten years has been a complete waste of time. It never ceases to amaze me that after eleven years in compulsory education and not grasping the basics; yet when they arrive in Further Education, “vocational” tutors are somehow expected to overcome all barriers and “cure” them of this unfortunate malady and in one or two years. Is it any wonder that that national success rates for Key Skills are so poor? 

So does this mean that the results of the whatsit report (the one from 2004 that found that passing GCSEs was too easy and that learners could effectively guess their way through it and pass with out the requisite skills) have now been kicked into the long grass for another year?  What does that say for the skills base of our workforce and the economic future of this country, especially in these hard times? Another influx of suitably skilled foreign workers? :-( !

Jim Knight - good to see that Mr M'Choakumchild has been thwarted in his gradgrindian ambitions

 ....  The Govt hasn’t yet got its act together on FS and is sending out confused messages. ...

Thanks for the update – extremely useful.