Functional Skills Newsletter Sept 27th

September 27th - the Functional Skills newsletter

In this issue, we have policy news about Functional Skills coming from BIS and DfE, an update on the national picture for initial assessment and diagnostic services, a summary of events that readers of the newsletter may be interested in and snippets of news and comment.

The future for Functional Skills looks very bright Three weeks into the new term and we're starting to hear snippets of news coming out of BIS and DfE about Functional Skills. Four things that caught our eye: A combination of a mauling in the Wolf report and the last set of national tests for Key Skills being released to Awarding Organisations confirms the fact that Key Skills finally end in September 2012 and there is no prospect of a reprieve unless the Government sets up a new quango to develop more national tests - we think that unlikely! The Government (through DfE) remains committed to GCSE English and Maths as the "Gold Standard" qualification and we understand would prefer all 16-18 year olds to continue studying for GCSE but accepts that Functional Skills is a qualification with progression towards GCSE. The Government (through BIS) has no appetite for introducing any new Literacy/Numeracy qualifications although it is listening to suggestions about how quickly assessments can be turned round to support those on Apprenticeship programmes. Watch this space for an announcement about the Adult Skills qualifications shortly. Practitioners (through the annual Functional Skills survey) have expressed very high confidence levels in Functional Skills, supporting the generally held view that with good delivery preparation, they are a valuable and valued qualification that are liked by students, tutors and employers alike.

Initial Assessment and Diagnostic for Functional Skills

This really is the story of the moment in Functional Skills with lots of activity and developments going on, so we thought it would be useful to report on the alternatives available in the market.

BBC Skillswise is in the process of being relaunched, but disappointingly, quizzes (even at levels 1/2) are simple multiple choice and not at all Fuunctional!

Guroo customers get the first version of their initial assessment and diagnostic tool this week. If your site already subscribes to Guroo, you don't have to do anything - other than let Guroo know if you'd like to be involved in the beta testing. Guroo are especially interested to hear from sites who have other initial assesment processes in place and who would like to compare the results. The Guroo version will not only provide an initial indication of the learner's level, but will include diagnostics that indicate strengths and weaknesses in terms of the official Functional Skills criteria ... and of course link direct to the Guroo resources that are designed to further develop those specific skills.

A free version of the levelling part of the Guroo tool will be made freely available at www.myfunctionalskills.co.uk once initial assessment has rolled out as a standard feature for Guroo subscribers. Go to www.myfunctionalskills.co.uk to register your interest.

Pearson have a beta version of the initial assessment tool for Functional English and Maths and welcome feedback. Access it here.

SkillsWorkshop has a range of free resources submitted to the site. Very helpfully, Maggie (who runs the site) has catorgorised resources into assessment, so they are fairly easy to find. Click here for a summary.

BKSB has a soon to be available interactive initial assessment tool. More details here.

ForSkills have SkillsAssess for Basic and Functional Skills. More details here.

Events coming up

With the expansion of the Apprenticeship programme very much in the news at the moment, Neil Stewart Associates are organising "The Future of Apprenticeships" in London on November 24th. Click here for a link to the full programme. This is an event that Guroo will be attending as exhibitors.

Another event that Guroo will be at is the Education Investor Awards 2011. And that's because Guroo have been shortlisted for the "best use of educational technology" alongside Pearson, Espresso, Promethean and others. Great company to be in!

Press reports and press releases related to Functional Skills

The BBC ran an interview with Chris Kirk (CEO of GEMS Education Solutions) about a Price Waterhouse Coopers report that suggested IT skills are most valued by employers who also report that 60% of employees need to improve skills in literacy and numeracy. It's still available on-line here.

City & Guilds have joined with BKSB to mutually endorse each others offer for Functional and Key Skills and to create a seamless set of support tools. Click here for more.

Nelson Thornes have signed an exclusive partnership agreement as resellers for ForSkills. More details here.

The new look TES ran a story about how £9bn of investment in adults basic skills had "fallen short" suggesting that too few enrolments on lower-level courses and too many people who lacked a certificate being accredited for higher level courses whose literacy and numeracy was acceptable.

Lord Digby Jones on Radio 4

Talking about skills, caused by the loss of jobs at BAE.
He continues to emphasise the need for good literacy and numeracy skills in the workforce and again criticises the education system for allowing half of all youngsters to leave full time education without these. Yet another pressure for Functional Skills.

Is 59% bad?

Radio 5 recording of an interview based on a report by PWC looking at basic skills.

Click here to listen

The 59% refers to the percentage of British business's who are unhappy with the skills of schools leavers, particularly Functional Skills.

Functional Skills Newsletter Sept 13th 2011

September 13th - the Functional Skills newsletter

In the first issue of the 2011/12 year, we have news about the Vorderman maths report, results from the Functional Skills Annual Survey that will impact on future newsletters, a completely unscientific look at pass/fail rates using Twitter, news about Guroo 2.1 including exciting developments around initial assessment and diagnostics and a brief look at events coming up.

"A World Class Maths Education For All"

Carol Vorderman led a team that was commissioned by the Conservative Party when in opposition to look at Maths teaching in all sectors. This report was published in August and came down very heavily in support of Functional Maths. Key points I picked out include:

• 75% of those with a grade C GCSE in Maths can’t do simple percentages, ratios and areas. The report suggested there was no point in force feeding trigonometry and algebra after age 14 when young people can’t even calculate a percentage.
• Need two GCSE in Maths – one practical (including Financial Maths) and one for those who will continue to A level and beyond.
• Radical change is necessary – can’t be right that only 15% of pupils study Maths post 16 when in other industrialised nations, it’s nearer 100%. Ms Vorderman said more than 300,000 16-year-olds each year completed their education without enough understanding of Maths to function properly in their work or private lives.
• The syllabuses must be allowed to reward students who are able to achieve a higher standard in a smaller area of the curriculum, rather than a low standard across a much wider curriculum (however this is eventually structured). Regulation currently prevents this from happening even though nearly half of our young people fail GCSE. By the age of 14 many of these have been turned off Mathematics and, when they finish studying Mathematics two years later, are still functionally innumerate.
• This often leaves pupils and students able to answer examination questions but without the functionality that they will need if they are to put the subject to use in employment or in other areas of study.

Michael Gove welcomed this report and recommendations.

Get ready for Guroo 2.1 - Initial Assessment, Diagnostics, and extra control

We are in the final stages of creating version 2.1 of Guroo, which will include:

• Functional Skills Initial Assessments for English and Maths, using Functional Skills questions, and testing specific elements of the Functional Skills criteria at all Levels. The Guroo Initial Assessment will include Functional Skills diagnostics that indicate strengths and weaknesses … along with links to Guroo resources that are designed to develop those skills.
• myChallenges and myTasks. Teachers will be able to track and report on Functional Skills that are practised and developed outside Guroo. For example, classroom discussions, field trips, sports day … add them to Guroo as “myChallenges”, identify the Functional Skills being practised, and from then on they become part of Guroo, with myFunctionalSkills reports combining the results from Guroo activities and your activities.
• New admin roles. Guroo 2.1 will give you more control over day to day items such as changing user names and passwords … and over the Groups that are so useful in managing your learners and associated reports.

As always, these new features will be rolled out automatically to existing customers at no extra cost.

The Functional Skills Annual Survey

We were absolutely delighted by the response from our 7000+ newsletter readers. Because we had such a large response, analysis is taking a little longer than we expected but it's really good to be able to share this finding about the newsletter relating to information and advice.

The majority of the survey respondents were readers of the Functional Skills newsletter. 49% of survey respondents said they were regular readers with another 36% classifying themselves as occasional readers. The remainder were not readers, or simply forwarded the newsletter onwards to their colleagues.

The Functional Skills newsletter is a valued source of information with 83% of respondents who answered this question rating the newsletter as useful to really useful. The six most valued key features in order of usefulness (along with the percentage of respondents who rated the feature as “really or quite useful”) are:

• Links to freely available Functional Skills resources (85%)
• Summary of official reports and papers (78%)
• Links to Awarding Organisation Functional Skills pages (62%)
• News and information about relevant events and conferences (54%)
• Press reviews (52%)
• News about the Guroo service (46%)

Based on this evidence, we'll be sure to do a lot more of the things above - thank you if you responded.

Events coming up

With the expansion of the Apprenticeship programme very much in the news at the moment, Neil Stewart Associates are organising "The Future of Apprenticeships" in London on November 24th. Click here for a link to the full programme. This is an event that Guroo will be attending as exhibitors.

Another event that Guroo will be at is the Education Investor Awards 2011. And that's because Guroo have been shortlisted for the "best use of educational technology" alongside Pearson, Espresso, Promethean and others. Great company to be in!

Capita Conferences are organising an event called "The Future of 14-19 Curriuclum". More on this in future editions.

Unscientific analysis of pass rates, jobs, and activity on Twitter and my blog.

Since the start of September, we've been following some indicators about Functional Skills on Twitter.

The number of tweeps who declared they had passed was 23, and tweeps who said they failed was 12.

The number of Functional Skills related jobs advertised on my twitter feed was 25.

And thank you to the 17000+ people who have visited my blog!

If you'd like to follow me on Twitter, #jwellsatguroo will work.