Most of you have by now read the announcement today that Functional Skills will no longer be tied to GCSE passes. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7979267.stm )
1) The government is still committed to FS
2) They have accepted the OfQual advice “for now”
3) They are going to find other incentives that will encourage FS as a separate qualification – including tying it to the new School Report Card
Diplomas continue to be a major driver for FS adoption as will the Foundation Learning Tier, indeed the FLT could be a very big influence indeed as students on the FLT are not expected to be getting grade C+ at GCSE.
And most importantly of all FS is a good stand-alone qualification (without GCSEs or Diplomas as a driver). There is going to be tons of pressure on schools to do FS as a separate subject and there’s support from many sides (inc CBI etc) to say that they will be looking for FS passes as a measure of functionality in addition to GCSE passes.
So maybe the message from the top changes from “Functional Skills will be a must-pass element of GCSEs from 2010” to “Functional Skills are built into the new GCSE specs from 2010”.
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Given the overlaps between the functional skills and GCSE qualifications for Maths and English and the obvious technical issues associated with these tests I fully support the change for these two subjects. However I believe that this change should not extend to ICT. By making Functional Skills a free standing qualification it is my view that we will damage the future of ICT as a GCSE and A level subject in our secondary schools, which will in the future undermine the quality of candidates we put forward into our Universities and the IT industry.
As a teacher of ICT it is my view that the majority of our current GCSE qualifications are in serious need of improvement and re-invigoration as they fail to reflect the key driver of the subject, that of change. The current specifications are tied, reflect development models for ICT that are outdated and which fail to reflect the ICT that is current within industry and society, in short there is clear ‘lag’.
My hope for the future for ICT in our schools was that the imminent renewal of GCSE qualifications would refresh the subject. I had believed that one of the elements that was going to ‘release’ the subject was the need to achieve functional literacy in the ICT basics along side the GCSE qualification, so removing the necessity to base our GCSE’s around these ‘basics’ as competency would have already been demonstrated.
This would allow KS4 and KS5 qualifications to concentrate on the vast array of ICT specialist skills which the continued health of our IT industry depends upon rather than on the predominantly ‘Office’ based skills of word processing, spreadsheets and databases that are embedded at the heart of our current qualifications. Instead our GCSE’s in ICT will now continue to place traditional, functional skills at the heart of their offerings giving little scope for creative and expressive use of the medium.
It is my view that students who take an ICT specialist GCSE need to also show their ‘baseline’ functional skills either at level 2 or level 1. I see no reason to be prescriptive and tiring the levels / grades together. I believe that for ICT, unlike maths and English, both qualifications need to be considered as complementary with FS ideally taken at the end of key stage 3 and used as a stepping stone to specialist GCSE study. In addition this would provide focus for Key Stage 3 teaching with the enhanced skills that were achieved being actively used in all subjects across the key stage 4 curriculum were traditional ‘office’ based computer skills are needed.
I fear that the current announcement will make this impossible and therefore there are some significant logical implications that need to be acknowledged:
• The majority of schools will now either drop Functional Skills (FS) from their curriculums or
• will do FS instead of the full GCSE courses thus limiting the exposure, competence range and aptitude of students for further study. Given that the new GCSE’s will cover the same ground as the FS there is no other logical conclusion.
• Whilst FS will continue be offered as a stand alone qualification, which I have to say makes sense for the adult market and for those without an ICT qualification (although there are some questions here about this role in relation to the ECDL qualification that is currently favoured by many employers), it will fail within secondary schools unless examination boards offer 2 GCSE specifications, one of which takes account of the FS qualification. I do not believe that the examination boards will do this. Whilst still being theoretically available, FS will suffer the same fate in schools as the ICT KS3 testing regime following the reversal of that policy….in place but used by very few.
• Very few students who do take the free standing FS will continue to study ICT at GCSE or A Level without the fundamental redesign of these qualifications.
• Students offered both the FS and GCSE qualifications will be faced with providing repeat evidence of skills for their GCSE which will deter them from progressing their studies into A level.
• Fewer students will be challenged by the formal ICT qualifications offered by school at a time when they will have the opportunity to partake in a vast array of complex, unstructured activities at home via the Internet. These students, as a consequence, will fail to develop the bridging skills needed for University study or ICT careers.
• The ‘new’ GCSE’s will continue to be ‘office’ based rather than enabling and allowing specialist and creative skills to be developed.
• We loose the impetus for change and we loose the essence of what our ‘knowledge’ based economy actually needs. We have been ultra safe, cautious and boring.
It is my view that students need exposure to a wide range of ICT tools so that they understand the potential they offer. Students, as with adults, need to use the skills they are taught in school or they inevitably loose them. In relation to ICT the absence of a context, other than the world of work which is used in the majority of syllabuses, makes this challenging, as it is a context that students have little experience of and which they find it difficult to relate to. Instead our primary objective must be to raise capability so that when the need arises the students have the confidence and understanding to re-equip / re-learn the skills they require.
I am confident that if we continue to concentrate on traditional ICT office based skills, that the number of students excited and engaged in the IT industry will diminish. I am equally confident that by changing the curriculum and concentrating on developing expressive and creative ICT skills that the traditional capabilities in office based skills will be naturally developed as a by-product of other learning, when the need arises. I think we have clear choices to make in terms of the direction of ICT in secondary schools and I fear that the current announcement has been made without a clear vision of what we want to achieve.
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