Making Sense of Functional Skills Newsletter Nov 22nd

November 22nd - the Functional Skills newsletter

In this issue, we have more news about the Government's commitment to Apprenticeships, details of the launch of new features in Guroo 2.1, the event season is well and truly in full swing, and more details of the Functional Skills Wednesday Webinar programme.

The Government strengthen their commitment to Functional Skills in ALL Apprenticeship programmes.

Hot on the heels of the letter from John Hayes (Minister for FE and Skills) confirming that Functional Skills will be a mandatory component of ALL Apprenticeships, comes news from the Association of Colleges conference and from the Apprenticeship Summit held on 16th November.

John Hayes speech to AoC focused on innovation and deregulation in FE, many promises of red-tape cutting and more flexibility for Colleges to develop provision, plus further support for Apprenticeship growth along with a review of the quality of Apprenticeship provision.

Vince Cable announced money for SME employers to support new Apprenticeships (taken, it appears, from existing budgets), more focus on 16-18 and 19-24 apprenticeship programmes and the requiremment for all Apprenticeship providers to offer GCSE or Functional Skills Maths and English at Level 2 to all Apprentices.

Just to remind you, the Minister in his recent letter said

“I want to re-assure you that I am committed to replacing Key Skills with Functional Skills in English and Maths (and ICT if required by the framework), as a mandatory component of all Apprenticeship frameworks, from the end of September 2012."

So there we have it in black and white; absolute confirmation that Functional Skills in Apprenticeships is the way forward, and the Minister's confirmation that he sees Functional Skills as essential.

The full text of the letter is here.

Guroo 2.1 - new additions

English Initial Assessment and Diagnostic is now available in Guroo 2.1 alongside Maths. ICT will be available early in the next term to complete the solution. Key Features of the Guroo system include:

• Written specifically for Functional Skills with a wide variety of question types based around problem solving.
• Each set of questions covers all the Functional Skills criteria at that level, giving tutors a detailed diagnostic report with direct links to further teaching and learning resources.
• Randomised question variables and question order means you can carry out assessments with groups - and/or repeat them later - and get meaningful results each time.

New User and Group Admin features have also been released in Guroo 2.1

• User Admin lets you edit details like names and passwords on-the-fly and can also help with managing short stay, roll on/roll off learner communities, using blank logins that you personalise as you need them.
• Group Admin means you can now create your own groups of learners and tutors as you need to; for any purpose.

And finally ... nearly 300 new quiz questions have gone live in Level 1 cross-curriculum challenges (a similar number of Level 2 questions are expected to be released shortly) and lots of new interactive activities have been added to Entry Level resources.

14-19 events and other news

You'll find the Guroo team at "The Future of Apprenticeships" in London on November 24th. Click here for a link to the full programme. This is an event that Guroo will be attending as exhibitors.

We'll also be at LEACAN on Friday 2nd December in Leamington Spa.

The BETT show is at London Olympia from 11th January - it's a shame the organisers have dropped the FE and Skills category from the BETT Awards though.

The Learning Technologies & Learning Skills conference and exhibition is also at London Olympia from January 25th.

Apprenticeships UK are planning their conference on March 7th in London.

And Naace have their annual conference starting March 8th in Leicester.

Webinar Wednesday from Guroo

Our brand new programme of twenty-minute Wednesday Webinar events is going down really well - more than 20 people joined last week's webinar about Guroo Resources.

You can replay what we covered here.

The schedule moving forward is:

Wednesday 23rd at 4.05pm - Guroo 2.1 User and Group Admin

Wednesday 30th at 4.05pm - Cross Curriculum Resources

How does it work? It's easy; email us at info@guroo.co.uk (from your work email address please) and we'll send you full joining instructions. All you need is an online computer with speakers or headphones.

You can just sit back, watch and listen - or interact and ask questions via online chat.

Is Wednesday a bad day for you? Then email us and we'll sort something out just for you!

Controversial Budget thoughts

Just returning from an industry meeting today and there was much talk of "hands off Government". You get the budget to spend as you wish but don't expect to get any more if we ask you to do something else in the future. And a thought struck me in relation to Vince Cable's announcement about Providers having to teach Functional Skills maths and English to ALL Apprenticeships. That thought was driven by another comment on linked in about budgets.

What if the Government takes the view that they have ALREADY provided the budget to teach Functional English and maths and asking providers to continue teaching English and maths is just part of the overall picture.

How would providers manage in this perhaps very real scenario possibility?

Level 2 Functional Skills for all Apprentices

The joint announcements from John Hayes, Vince Cable and the Apprenticeship summit in London has led me to draw an interesting conclusion.

All providers will now be expected to offer English and maths to level 2 as part of ANY apprenticeship programme. Note it says says offer as opposed to pass, nevertheless, that's quite a big change. At the moment Apprentices typically follow Level 1 Key Skills, that has been changed to Functional Skills (latest change date is September) as confirmed by John Hayes.

So they will have to pass Level 1 Functional Skills as a minimum, now they must do Level 2 Functional Skills throughout their programme, presumably as part of the Government's push to get all 16-19 year olds continuing their maths and English study.

I have to say, excellent news for Functional Skills providers such as ourselves at Guroo!

Apprenticeships being stretched and potentially in danger of losing their good status

When we mention apprenticeships, I think we all think about the traditional 1 or 2 year training programme with some day release at college. That's changing quickly, and not necessarily for the better.

The National Apprenticeship Service has lots of 12 or 26 week apprenticeships advertised - indeed my own daughter did a 12 week contact centre apprenticeship in the summer. The problem with these is that often all the time is spent in a training environment with none or virtually none in a real working environment - to me that's not an apprenticeship at all.

Plus it gives no time to the vitally important aspects of literacy and numeracy training - hopefully Functional Skills.

These 12 week programmes have a very bad spell about them - why do providers always try to reduce good programmes down to point of being pointless, are we the only country where quality and experience is less important than getting the boxes ticked as fast as possible?

Time for a re-think on this - perhaps BIS need to provide unequivocal guidance about Functional Skills and length of time to stop providers trying to break and bend the system.