Functional Skills newsletter June 21st

June 21st - the Functional Skills newsletter

In this issue, we lead with a true story that could be the tip of a very large iceberg; a follow up to the QCDA link to Awarding Organisations from the last newsletter; a reminder about the Skills Conference and advance news of a Guroo Challenge for you!

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"A 75min exam with two questions? Are you serious?"

Our lead piece this week has been chosen to reflect a concern that has cropped up quite a number of times on Twitter; how students are being prepared for their Functional Skills exams. The title quote is from a student on Twitter from 4pm on June 15th after the exam.

On the same day I personally took a call quite late in the evening from a student (let’s call her Helen) who had bought access to www.myguroo.co.uk so she could practice and revise for her Functional Skills English Level 2 exams in a weeks time.

Me Good afternoon Guroo!

Helen I’ve just bought the cram4exam access for English and I want my money back

Me Oh, why is that?

Helen Because I’ve just been on the quizzes and they aren’t multiple choice

Me They aren’t meant to be - so what’s the problem?

Helen My teacher told me to go on Bitesize, Move On and Key Skills 4u to revise for Functional Skills and they are all multiple choice so yours must be wrong

Me No, we are right, your teacher shouldn’t really be telling you to practice Functional Skills using Key Skills resources because they are so different. Anyone expecting their Functional Skills exam to be a series of multiple choice questions is going to be in for a shock.

Helen So how do I revise then?

Me Tackle the Guroo Challenges - you can do them on paper or on-line

Helen But they all ask me to write loads

Me Yes .......

Helen And They're hard and take a while to do

Me Yes ……

Helen Is there not somewhere else I can go that just does multiple choice questions like Bitesize?

We strongly believe that students should not be preparing for Functional Skills exams by doing multiple choice tests designed for Key Skills. It's just wrong!

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Links to AO past papers

In the last newsletter we highlighted the annual qualifications market report from Ofqual. This generated lots of discussion and more questions including many requests for links to the AO Functional Skills sites. We have done our best to get as close as possible to the Functional Skills part of the each website below.

1st4Sport - English L1

AQA - all subjects and all levels

Acentis - all subjects and all levels

BHEST - English L1

City and Guilds - all subjects and all levels

Skillsfirst/EAL/IMI consortium - All subjects at levels 1&2

EDI - all subjects and all levels

Edexcel - all subjects and all levels

NCFE - all subjects and all levels

NOCN - all subjects and all levels

OCR - all subjects and all levels

SQA - English and maths levels 1&2

WJEC - all subjects and all levels

The Ofqual full report can be accessed here with the section on Functional Skills starting on page 63.

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A Challenge from Guroo!

Got an idea for a great Functional Skills practise scenario? We’d love to hear about it.

We’re inviting newsletter readers to help us design a new Guroo Challenge, covering all three subjects and adaptable for use at all 5 levels.

We'll do the work to produce the content; but we need your ideas for scenarios. Naturally, we will give you equal "billing and credit" in the finished item, and we'll make the resulting Challenge available to the whole Functional Skills community free of charge.

Our plan is to develop them over the next few months and launch them at BETT in January 2012.

So if you have a great idea for a new Challenge , especially if it addresses some of the harder to teach skills criteria, then email jwells@guroo.co.uk or call me on 0191 3055045 for a chat.

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Enhancing Literacy and Numeracy conference - Next steps for SfL and Functional Skills - July 6th in London.

A quick reminder about this conference due to take place next month in London.

Register here or contact jacqueline.gorman@neilstewartassociates.co.uk (please mention the Functional Skills newsletter)

A student being led up the wrong path

I took a most frustrating call today from a student (let’s call her Helen) who had bought access to www.myguroo.co.uk so she could practice and revise for her Functional Skills English Level 2 exams in a weeks time.

Me Good afternoon Guroo!

Helen I’ve just bought the cram4exam access for English and I want my money back

Me Oh, why is that?

Helen Because I’ve just been on the quizzes and they aren’t multiple choice

Me They aren’t meant to be - so what’s the problem?

Helen My teacher told me to go on Bitesize, Move On and Key Skills 4u to revise and they are all multiple choice so yours must be wrong

Me No, we are right, your teacher shouldn’t be telling you to practice Functional Skills using Key Skills resources because they are so different. Anyone expecting there Functional Skills exam to be a series of multiple choice questions is going to be in for a shock.

Helen So how do I revise then.

Me Try doing a worksheet

Helen But they all ask me to write loads

Me yes

Helen So how do you know if I have got it right

Me We don’t – you have to judge for yourself using our model solutions and by working out if you’ve covered all the things we said you should be looking for.

Helen So who marks the work I do

Me No-one, but you can check if you’re doing well by doing the quizzes

Helen But they are hard and take a while

Me yes …….

Helen Is there not somewhere else I can go that just does multiple choice questions like Bitesize?

There’s more but you’ll have got my point, there are no short cuts, exams are hard, and as a student tweeted today “75 minutes and only two questions – what’s that all about?” Well actually, that’s Functional Skills.

More Government U turns?

Whether it is a U turn or simply as review of priorities doesn't really matter - what's important is the outcome is more resources going into teaching and learning!

See this BBC report

Functional Skills Newsletter June 7th

June 7th - the Functional Skills newsletter

This week we have items about which of the Awarding Organisations are the most popular for Functional Skills; news about the Enhancing Literacy and Numeracy conference; photos of prize winners; a request to please "Plus 1" www.guroo.info and a summary of press comment.

Enhancing Literacy and Numeracy conference - Next steps for SfL and Functional Skills - July 6th in London.

We're very happy to include notification of this conference organised by our friends at Neil Stewart Associates. They write:

The majority of the 2020 workforce is already out of formal education. The Wolf Review made a number of recommendations including ensuring that those on vocational routes post-16 continue to study English and mathematics. We know that to maintain the drive to improve basic literacy, language and numeracy, and ensure all adults have a basic platform for employability, the skills system must respond to those already in employment.

This annual ‘Skills for Life’ conference brought to you by 157 Group and NRDC (National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy), will give you the opportunity to:

• Examine the critical challenges for life-long learning in the UK and hear how adult learning is equipping the economy to meet these challenges
• Hear how colleges and training institutions are building the capacity of their numeracy provision to ensure it is sufficient to support people to reach the functional level
• Share experiences and innovative ideas for embedding SfL/functional skills into existing curriculum areas
• Review the latest developments in the functional skills agenda, including structure, standards and assessment methods
• Set out the opportunities for employers of enhancing work-based learning
• Examine the role of technology and its contribution to new teaching methods

Now in its 8^th year it features an expert line-up of speakers for you to hear, meet and network with including:

• Robert Pheasant, Head of Skills for Life, Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS)
• Karen Adriaanse HMI, National Adviser for Employability, Ofsted
• Helen Casey, Executive Director, NRDC
• Nick Linford, Lsect
• Jill Lanning, Chief Executive, Federation of Awarding Bodies
• Lee Davies, Deputy Chief Executive, Institute for Learning

Register here or contact jacqueline.gorman@neilstewartassociates.co.uk (please mention the Functional Skills newsletter)

Which Awarding Bodies are most active in Functional Skills?

The annual qualifications market report from Ofqual was published last week. In the last year of the pilot, just over 240,000 Functional Skills qualifications were awarded.

AQA is the biggest provider of GCSE with 45% of the market followed by Edexcel with 22% and OCR with 21%. What I find interesting is how this compares to Functional Skills.

The most popular choice of awarding body for Functional Skills was split between Edexcel and AQA with C&G and OCR in third and fourth spot respectively so Edexcel are clearly outperforming their competitors in Functional Skills qualifications!

Take That Lynn plus 1!

Two prizes here, one for Lynn Preston of YH Training in Scarborough who in turn ran another competition for the other ticket won by Paula!

We're sorry about the quality of the photograph, but it does show Lynn with "the boys" in the background!

In the press over the last couple of weeks.

The Daily Telegraph has an interview with Tim Oates from Cambridge Assessment about the need for "rigorous" vocational qualificiations at 16.

The Guardian reports on the latest BIS report that employability skills are the key to success in prison education.

The Excellence Gateway has been revamped as LSIS bring together resources from a number of different systems under one roof however the section on Functional Skills does seem to lean heavily on OCR resources - perhaps there's more work to be done there!

FE News has a report on how the skills gap is contributing to record levels of youth unemployment.

The TES carried a story about the demand for STEM from business and the issues that the education system was finding in supplying this demand.

New Guroo.info site now live

And a pretty impressive piece of work it is too with lots of information about functional Skills, web 2.0 links to +1, facebook and twitter and RSS feeds about Functional Skills.

Try it out now and whilst you are there, try out Google new +1 feature by clicking on the logo at the top RHS menu. Apparently it will be an indicator of quality and relevance!

Employability Skills

There is a nice piece in Sec-Ed today about ASDAN employability skills and in particular the CoPE. The CoPE has come in for criticism becuase it's seen as one of those "easy to pass" quals that add to schools points table and students GCSE. That may be the case, but equally, it's actually a good qualification for those people who really need it. The solution could be to remove the points from it to stop encouraging schools to use it for performance table purposes and this will means those that do follow CoPE will actually value it and benefit from the skills it focusses on.

Maybe this is what the Government has in mind when it says "all qualifications" from awarding bodies are OK but only some will get counted?