Edition 224 newsletter

Functional Skills reform programme

The ETF have published a 25 page document that is the summary of findings of the employer survey.

It's worth a read, but if you're in a rush, the key findings are:

• Employees often "fear" maths (more so than English) and are often reluctant to engage with the subjects as they lack confidence and mastery of essential skills. This also applied to some teachers.
• The maths skills of particular importance include basic maths (area, estimation, conversions, days, geometrical, magnitude, perimeters, scales, 10s, 100s, 1000s), percentages, fractions, ratios and mental arithmetic. Employers are less interested in what they consider to be academic mathematics (e.g. algebra, calculus, etc.).
• English skills of particular importance include the basics of what is known as the “SPAG” group of skills (spelling, punctuation and grammar) were also frequently mentioned as being important, together with good communication skills – especially oral ones via telephone and in customer-facing and colleague-facing environments.
• A comparison by size of employer in employment terms suggests that larger organisations (those with greater than 50 staff) are slightly less happy with the maths and English capabilities of their existing workforce. Larger employers also place greater importance on collecting and representing data using ICT, including spreadsheets, while small businesses appear more likely to view mental arithmetic skills as being of greater importance.
• There appears to be a polarisation of opinion on the treatment of digital skills within English and maths. Some employers regard such skills as a distraction – almost an irrelevance – to the need to upgrade basic maths and English skills – while some argue that everything should be integrated into digital skills.
• Half of surveyed employers (50%) had heard of Functional Skills qualifications prior to responding to the consultation, with the results indicating that larger employers are more likely to be familiar (64% familiar) than those with fewer than 50 staff (39% familiar).

The full report is here.

A link to the second phase survey for practitioners/providers of FS qualifications is here and will be open until Friday 24th June.