What's a GCSE worth?

Intersting conversation today.
Some schools are putting their pupils through the ALN tests which are really designed for adults - I guess that's why they are called Adult Literacy and Numeracy. But becuase they count half a GCSE it matters to the schools so they do it.
Functional English and Maths is worth 3/4 of a GCSE so this is another big focus area.
Part of the skill of developing materials and something which I'm cottoning onto quickly is that they have to convert to counting towards a qualifications - learning for the sake of learning doesn't count to schools.
It isn't quite the same in colleges but when functional skills in the diplomas takes over, it will!

New guidleines published

I always thought of myself as being reasonably well up to speed on devcelopments, especially for a commercial organisation. Clearly I'm wrong as I only found out today of last weeks chnages in functaional skills.

Now I know there's a change, I've got to work out what has changed if you see what i mean and that is surprosingly hard.

It's easy to find reams of paperwork, it's harder to find the summary or headlines.

Why can't someone do a fools guide to functional skills and send me the update with just the headlines?

NEETs

Copy of Key Skills post.
Ofsted say there are 200,000 16-18 year olds not working nor at college. That's a lot more than I thought and if my calcuations are right it's about 15% of the total. Given that around 55% of students get 5+A*-C GCSE passes or equivalent at school that leaves about 30% going to College still looking to get a level 2 award.

The Government wants to get 90% of all 16-18 year olds with level 2 qualifications. Not only do we need to improve the achievement of those at college but we also need to get at least half of those NEETs into college and working through the levels.

Which brings me to another point. Schools seem to have no ongoing responsibility for the kids they have failed - many of whom will become NEETs. There's abigger picture here that everyone seems to acknowledge but there's not a lot being done about it. Maybe it's time for schools to carry some additional respoinsibility beyond age 16.

Is it learning or a qualification that's more important?

It's a bit like another question I posted and it was stimulated by two recent meetings I had.

In one meeting, the question I was asked wasn't whether guroo would help students to learn, it was what they got if they completed it - in other words a qualification or specific measureable outcome. Now I understand this point of view very clearly and indeed in a previous life, I built a very successful company solely on outcomes but it also leads to a degree of frustration when you're dealing with students who struggle to engage in learning in the first place.

In the second meeting, I was asked a similar question and with some trepidation said that guroo was about improving underlying learning and engaging studnets in learning who have a history of dis-engagement. And the person who asked me the questions was very happy with this.

Definetly goes to show that there is room for both approaches - let's just hope that those who want an outcomes based approach also have some room for some straightforward learning as well!

It is proof that is important

I suggested in a previous post that in some circumstances, it is more important to prove that something has happened than it is to do it.
I was doing some lesson plans recently for a course I'm following at college and this comment really came home when I was told that although the outline of the lesson plan template was useless as gthere was no differention or extension, I had to use the template otherwise I could never proves to the assessemnt people that i knew what I was doing.
Bit frustrating but if it has to be done ......