Another career door closed

A piece in the TES made me think today.

It was all about teachers having thr right level of qualification and basically the argument was that taechers should have at least a B at GCSE and certainly no worse than a 2;2 in their degree.

I sort of fail on both accounts, my O level grade in English was just a C and my degree in Pure Maths from 1984 is just a third.

According to the Government, this makes me too thick to be teacher. I don't really have a problem with that as I already have a career but what I do have a problem with is that this apparent focus applies to teachers, who on the whole "do good and add value" to our society whereas bankers don't need any form of qulaification at all and do the complete opposite.

Must be lovely to have a pair of politicians glasses that enable you to see the world with such clear vision!

Level 3 Functional Maths

This doesn't exist, the argument being is that if you can show that you are functional at level 2 then you are functional, you can't become more functional!

But listening to my favourite radio show this morning (Radio 2 Johnnie Walker standing in for Terry Wogan) Johhnnie mentioned that the new maths A level "Using Maths" was causing some consternation amongst the acadmeic community.

Too right, sounds like a level 3 functional maths qualification to me.

But then again, perhaps we could ask those people who are supposed to be numerate (bankers, those insurance people who tell me that I'm lucky not to have lost more money on my endowmment policy, politicians who apparently think that a cut in funding is actually an increase - I could go on) to do this real life A level in Maths?

Getting it right

Something I've noticed very clearly over the last few months (since about Easter I guess) is that confidence in what functional skills is, is increasing.

A year ago, 6 months ago even, we'd start every conversation by saying - "do you know what functional skills are?" then spend a few minutes explaining them before we ever talked about Guroo.

But that's changes, and it's a bit like a switch, the change has happened remarkably quickly and the balance is now in favour of knowledge about FS. Now we're being asked how we help!

Add to that the fact that Nov and Jan exam results were very much more respectable and indeed were higher than the equivalent GCSE then it's all starting to come together.

Ed Balls on GMTV

He looked to me like someone making a play for the big job!

DCFS Conference

I was fortunate enough to make the DCFS organised conference on 14-19 in early June.

Some key highlights that I noted .

An ask the audience straw poll at the beginning of the day:

How prepared do you feel about: Diplomas Functional Skills FLT

Very confident 8% 10% 11%

Quite confident 51% 45% 27%

Not that confident 31% 38% 43%

Not at all confident 10% 8% 19%

Targeting

Diplomas are badly targeted - By saying it's for everyone, the message that it's more right for some groups is sadly weakened. DCFS were encouraged to make it clear who the target students were.

Students love them

They like Functional Skills much more than GCSE. They like the practical aspects of the Diplomas. They like the fact they move around - although this is itself is a serious problem for organisations. Retention on the Diplomas is excellent.

Conflict at institution level

There are many many conflicts.

Students movement, difficult to teach, harder to pass, cultural differences between schools and colleges, competition for funding between institutions, scared to put students in who may fail.

One final point. They did make a lot of the fact that by having regional events, we could reduce our carbon footprint. But at the same time I counted a dozen support staff at each regional event - effectively three times the normal number required. Must have cost a fortune to put on and also cost a lot of CO2 putting all those extra people up in the Hilton each night.

Sorry for the break in service - back again now

A few things have conspired to stop me updating my blog.

I had a holiday!

Life at guroo is extremely busy

The www.functionalskills.org forum has been established and this has taken up a fair bit of time.

Back again now though.

Jonathan

Hard to engage kids

Yet another report this week highlighting the difference in achievement between those who have a hard start in life and those who don't.

Looked after children and those who move around a lot do so much more badly at school.  I've mentioned this before but there should be no reason why this is the case, but it is.

I do believe the tightly structured curriculum and the focus on teaching to the test means these groups of children suffer when it comes to exams.  

Lets just hope that the more practical curriculum that will come about with functional skills and, at least for these groups, the introduction of the Foundation Learning Tier will help them.  It's really about time we move away from focusing the majority of the best resources on the borderline and started to address the issues of learning rather than passing exams.