Awarding Organisations and Functional Skills

Based on 377 completed responses to the Functional Skills survey and note that some institutions will use more than one AO so the results will not add up to 100%, the results are:

City and Guilds are the most popular choice with a market share of 49%, followed by Pearson (Edexcel) with 36%, OCR on 17% and Pearson (EDI) 14%. "Others" accounted for 26% market share but no company exceeded 5% market share on an individual basis.

Looking just at the FE sector, EDI are much less prevalent whilst OCR and Edexcel get higher market shares, it's the other way round in work based learning where EDI and City & Guilds both increase their market shares. 

Overall, the Awarding Organisations should be pleased with the customer satisfaction ratings from the respondents with more than 80% describing themselves as very or quite happy.  Of particular note are EDI and OCR who both nudged 90% satisfaction by this measure.

Confidence in Functional Skills

In the 2013 Functional Survey, with more than 400 respondents, part of the survey was about confidence.

Overall, 89% of all respondents are confident that they are fully training and prepared to deliver Functional Skills, a number that has been climbing steadily over the last three years.  Of perhaps more importance is in other areas of confidence in the qualification.

Confidence amongst respondents that Functional Skills is a rigorous (90%) and valuable (88%) qualification is extremely high.  What is possibly surprising is that the same group also reported that 66% of learners actually enjoy doing functional skills and 70% of tutors enjoy teaching it!

So there we have it, a rigorous, valuable qualification that both learners and tutors enjoy doing - all in all, a very resounding vote of confidence from the sectors!

New Functional Skills English Tutorial Video

Reading between the lines.
Linked to the following English Functional Skills criteria:

• English Level 2 (Reading) - detect point of view, implicit meaning and/or bias 
• English Level 2 (Reading) - identify the purposes of texts and comment on how meaning is conveyed 
• English Level 2 (Writing) - present information and ideas concisely, logically, and persuasively 
• English Level 1 (Reading) - identify the main points and ideas and how they are presented in a variety of different types of texts 
• English Level 1 (Speaking and listening) - present information/points of view clearly and in appropriate language 

Produced by Guroo, copyright Guroo 2013, unauthorised use is prohibited by copyright law.

Guroo enjoys its' most successful period ever.

Guroo enjoys its' most successful period ever. 

Not really a surprise as in just 3 months Guroo has added amongst many other things:

• Almost 40 English, ICT and maths tutorial videos - high quality, high impact and suitable for tutors who need a refresh and learners developing new skills.  Watch one of the latest English videos "Reading between the lines" about fact, opinion, bias and implicit meaning.
• Unique Exam Practice questions that are proving incredibly popular with learners and tutors alike (tutors especially like the detailed mark schemes on pdf, often sharing these with learners).
• KISS Assess - a brand new simple and straightforward self registered assessment tool that produces a full Functional Skills diagnostic report - ideal for use to check skills in pre-recruitment and pre-enrolment with prices starting at just 95p.  Call us and we'll set-you up a free trial or webinar.

And don't forget that with Guroo you get fantastic resources plus the most rigorous, comprehensive Functional Skills assessment and diagnostic that takes the average student just 53 minutes per subject to complete - and it's available on-line, off-line and on paper.

Since September almost 100,000 unique learners have used the Guroo system - more than 3 times as many as in the same period in the previous year, and Guroo measure unique visitors who actually log-in (using Google Analytics), not "users" who are registered on a database but never go anywhere near a log in.

To celebrate, the Guroo guys have come up with some extra special Christmas "pressies" for both old and new customers. But as with all "pressies", we'll keep them wrapped and secret, but you must "open" them in time for Christmas.  So whether you're considering adding more licences, or indeed joining Guroo for the first time, call or email Cathy on 07595 120913 (Southern'ish based customers), Daisy on 07737 317735 (Northern'ish based customers), or Jonathan on 07753 822393 (anywhere, he doesn't mind).

But do it quickly, these offers are genuinely for Christmas only!

PISA - more bad news for UK Education

PISA - more bad news for UK schools 

And as if to emphasise the issues raised above in the case of Apprenticeships, PISA, the international comparison of educational achievement run by OECD came out recently.

England and NI did badly, Scotland was slightly better and Wales came off worst, All four home nations sit well down the rankings with no relative improvement on an international basis. Interestingly, and only perhaps because the Government has used this country as an example of good practice, Sweden came 38th, some 15 places behind the UK average.

Click here for the BBC report on the results.

GCSE or Functional Skills - has the Government blundered over Apprenticeships?

The largest discussion ever within the linked-in group Apprenticeships 4 England has centred on an issue raised in the last newsletter about GCSE vs Functional Skills in Apprenticeships.

With just short of 100 comments from 20 contributors with Roger Francis (CL Partners) and Marius Frank (SCiP5) leading the way, it makes interesting reading and it shows how much the sector believes in Functional Skills as the best way forward in vocational education.

It just shows what a big issue this one is, and with the ball still very much in play, if you have a view then take a few minutes and record it.

Newsletter Dec 10th summary

December 10th - the Functional Skills newsletter

In this issue we report on a really interesting discussion started by Roger Francis and now added to by another 20 participants - is GCSE really the right way forward for Apprenticeships? We also have the summary of PISA - more bad news about international comparisons.

But against all this and much closer to home, we have some really good news from the Guroo guys (who employ me to write this newsletter) about special Christmas Offers, a lins to one of the latest English Functional Skills video "Reading between the lines" and of course an update on recorded webinars, an increasingly popular resource within the Functional Skills community

As always, we aim to send this newsletter out every two weeks, (except during holidays such as Christmas) your comments and thoughts are always appreciated - let us know what you'd like us to cover in the newsletter by emailing the editor - jwells@guroo.co.uk