Functional Skills revision materials are presented in the form of subject based course covering maths, English and ICT at Level 2, Level 1 initially.
Click on any of the links below to get you through to the right page:
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
Revision resources for the independent learner
This is quite a big development and aimed specifically at the independent learner who is following a range of functional skills courses from all the major awarding bodies including C&G, Edexcel, OCR, AQA and Skillsfirst.
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
Functional Skills Newsletter April 26th
Please follow us on Twitter @guroofs and like us on Facebook at guroo.functionalskills. Congratulations to everyone planning to get married this week and like most of the rest of the country, we too will be off again on a long weekend. The next newsletter is likely to be Tuesday May 10th - if you have anything you'd like us to know about, just get in touch jwells@guroo.co.uk
April 26th - the functional skills newsletter
Training Providers' students still struggling with Functional Skills
A headline piece about Functional Skills was run in the TES (FE Focus) on 22nd April. It was difficult to get the gist of the report which basically said that foundation learners studying at training centres were struggling to come to terms with Functional Skills because they were harder to pass.
There was interesting support for Functional Skills from the Association of Colleges who said that colleges had embraced Functional Skills “Functional Skills are certainly seen as more academically rigorous, and there may have been some initial resistance from students on courses not traditionally associated with high levels of literacy and numeracy.”
Now that the Federation of Awarding Bodies and Association of Colleges have come out in support of Functional Skills over Key Skills, only the Association of Learning Providers remains as supporters of Key Skills.
The DfE confirmed is was looking again at the postponement of Functional Skills in apprenticeships following the Wolf report where Professor Wolf described Key Skills as offering "no progression" and "valueless".
Employability Skills part 2
We ran this story about employability skills last newsletter and we've decided to leave it in again with even more links from academic journals - it was clearly very useful for lots of readers.
A really interesting link was from Psychology Today entitled "Whose Children Will Get the Best Jobs in the 21st Century?" and subtitled "The best jobs will go to applicants who can think". It's a good read and what really caught my eye was this;
"This assembly line, test prep system doesn't prepare today's children to what the best job employers are already seeking - the ability to transfer knowledge to new contexts and apply that knowledge along with critical analysis of new information, judgment, creative problem solving, and the ability to evaluate and select which new data and tools can be applied in new ways to solve new problems and create new outcomes."
Now where have we seen that before I wonder? Here's a selection of links:
Functional Japanese?
I have no idea how, why or where I came across this and indeed, I'm not entirely sure it's for real but if you go to Amazon Japan, you can buy Functional English books and resources published by Pearson (edexcel) and OCR!
Just ￥8,377 will get you the OCR Pilot CD ROM for E3 and L1/L2 or if you're feeling a bit richer, why not try Pearsons Functional English teaching and learning resources CD for ￥51,099.
So far, there are no reader comments against each of them so why not be the first. For info, £1 buys you ￥135 so if they do sell in quantities, both OCR and Pearson will be very happy and if you do buy, do let the newsletter know what Amazon recommends next time you log on!
Lynn celebrates
Our independent judge had a tough time but when the crunch came, she judged this as the best entry in our Take That competition.
Guroo works by being an ideal evolution of a training solution!
Congratulations to Lynn Preston of YH Training in Scarborough. She's already brushed off the "I love Robbie" T shirt and will be joining us on May 31st in Sunderland - pics to follow!
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Now AoC support Functional Skills
From the TES today 22/4/11
Debbie Ribchester, curriculum manager at the Association of Colleges, said: "Functional skills are certainly seen as more academically rigorous, and there may have been some initial resistance from students on courses not traditionally associated with high levels of literacy and numeracy." But she said colleges had embraced them.
And this is the same organisation that claimed colleges were unprepared for them just four months when appealing for an extension to the Key Skills qualification.
Posted by Jonathan Wells of Guroo www.guroo.info
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Functional Skills in Japan?
I picked this up on my twitter feed.
Clicked through the link and it takes you to Amazon Japan where you can buy Level 2 English Functional Skills resources for VLE!
Only Y51,000 according to the Google translations.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
April 12th - back to our regular newsletter editions
April 12th - back to our regular newsletter editions
NCETM says "success means becoming creative problem solvers!"
The QCDA Functional Skills evaluation was generally very supportive of teaching Functional Skills in KS3. One of the findings in 'Delivery of Functional Skills' was "FS provision can be accommodated and taught effectively within the context of the national curriculum
requirements at KS3 and KS4."
Also supporting this but from a completely different angle is NCETM who argue that doing too much, too quickly with the object of early entry in GCSE can be detrimental. They have a lovely quote which regular readers will indentify as something that warms my heart!
Sounds to me like Functional SKills could (and indeed should) be part of the answer again!
Employability Skills
Just about every "heavy" newspaper has jumped on this issue since it was raised last week by David Frost, the outgoing Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce. Using emotive words such as "remedial, failure, victims and attack" pretty much sums up the newspaper views which focussed very heavily on the lack of skills of school and college leavers:
"School leavers do not have the skills needed for the world of work, forcing companies to spend billions of pounds bringing them up to speed"
"Firms forced to spend billions on remedial training for victims of education failure".
Here's a selection of links:
Edexcel on Functional Skills
One very significant change since the Wolf report has been how far the signatories to the letter requesting an extension of Key Skills to September 2012 have distanced themselves from that request.
The Federation of Awarding Bodies said "Increasingly functional skills are meeting the bill and the fact that the current model has created some problems for work-based learners should not detract from the fact that they are proving suitable for full-time students." And there's been no defence from ALP or AoC who both chose to ignore the issues about Key Skills.
Edexcel have always been supportive though and placed a comment on their functional skills website with the words "Functional Skills are challenging, worthwhile qualifications, denoting a marker of student excellence" We couldn't agree more!
Multi award winning Guroo
You know the saying about waiting for a bus then three arrive together. Well, the same can be said about awards up here at Guroo Towers.
Not content with winning the Sun-FM on-line achievement award on March 18th, the Guroo guys then won the Norh East Business Award (Durham and Wearside) for Internet and ICT and capped it all off by winning 2010 Small Business of the Year (Durham and Wearside) at the same event on March 24th.
Keep up to date with GurooFS by "liking" us on facebook here.
Stewart Hutton and Jonathan Wells pitch side after collecting their winners awards at the Stadium of Light.Thursday, 7 April 2011
Edexcel - clear support for Functional Skills
| What does the Wolf Report say about Functional Skills? |
Functional Skills as a qualification is not mentioned in Professor Wolf’s 27 overarching recommendations, although it is referred to in Appendix VIII: Mathematics and English Post-16. Professor Wolf remains a big advocate of literacy and numeracy skills – with a huge focus on the continued need for English & Maths in 16-19 education. Drawing on evidence taken from the pilot study of Functional Skills, the Wolf Report raises some concerns about the implementation of Functional Skills. These concerns were similarly highlighted during the pilot study, and were addressed during this period. Alison Wolf comments that Functional Skills pass rates are lower than those for Key Skills. This is still true post-pilot, and on one level may be due to this being a new qualification. However, this should not take away from the fact that Functional Skills are challenging, worthwhile qualifications, denoting a marker of student excellence. Our Functional Skills results will be published online shortly to reflect this. The Wolf Report advocates Maths and English GCSEs as ‘key indicators of acceptable levels of attainment’. How do Functional Skills sit alongside this? Since the launch of Functional Skills, these qualifications have been designed to exist alongside GCSEs. They have been mapped to their corresponding GCSEs, with the functional elements now embedded into the new GCSE specifications. Functional Skills have been directly designed in response to employers’ perceptions that many young people and adults are not achieving a firm enough grounding of the basics. We couldn't agree more - Jonathan Wells of Guroo Functional Skills |
Thursday, 31 March 2011
April 1st newsletter special edition
April 1st - a special edition bringing breaking news!
STOP PRESS ..... STOP PRESS ....it has taken quite a bit of work, but “our mole” at DfE has eventually got advance notice of the Government’s response to a number of consultations including the Wolf Report and National Curriculum Review. Also in this special edition, we get advance news on FFS, LVA and changes to League Table measures.
Progression and Grade Boundaries
Awarding organisations support Professor Wolf’s theory that AOs should be able to decide on which qualifications they introduce, but that all qualifications should have progression built in. Our “mole” has seen several proposals including:
- GCSE Stuff – a new course based around employability skills, English and maths that is aimed at those students whose achievement expectation is “in quartile 4”. A further development of this course - GCSE Harder Stuff will be aimed at quartile 3 students, but in a fight for equivalence, AOs say they will be worth the same number of points. AOs refused to comment on the availability of GCSE Really Hard Stuff and GCSE Virtually Impossible Stuff aimed at further progression for quartile 2 and 1 students respectively.
- GCSE grade boundaries are being revised. A*-C continue but the lowest achievable grade in a single exam will now be D. E grade will be awarded to students for effort, if they re-sit both exams at least twice over 2 years post-16. E* will be reserved for those who try at least 3 times. While equivalence is a dirty word at DfE we understand an E grade will be counted as higher than a D grade but less than a C grade and E* grade will be the new minimum requirement for all apprenticeship programmes. We understand that a proposal to change the alphabet in the National Curriculum to reflect these changes will not be implemented.
- The National Curriculum review also has progression as a theme. In an effort to engage a wider and more popular audience, the National Curriculum Review will link up with the new series of Britain’s Got Talent. Each week, the public get to vote for their favourite act ... plus their favourite subject, with the final 6 subjects all getting a guaranteed place in the National Curriculum from 2012.
FFS - Funding Following the Student Proposals
In a further development of FFS (Funding Following the Student), a new trial scheme is launched today with FE colleges in the South West. All students will be given a LRS (Learner Response System) to vote on the worth of the lesson using LVA (Lesson Value Add) measures.
Colleges will be paid for each DL (Delivered Lesson) based on a FF (Funding Formula) that includes SNV (Student Numbers Voting) and LVA. We understand that RM, IBM, and BMW are all shortlisted bidders for the IRO (Initial Roll-Out) of the LRS handsets and LVA software.
If the pilot is successful, we understand that the software can be adapted for school use with LVA replacing Ofsted inspections and a further optional add-on that will enable teachers’ pay to be linked to students assessment of lesson performance.
Performance Table Changes!
The Government has already floated a number of ideas to change the way that school league tables are judged, but they haven’t captured the public’s imagination.
The latest from the internal think tank is "measurement against ambition".
A new question will be introduced at KS1 called “When I grow up, I’d like to be a …………".
Students can choose from a list of over 300 occupations including the usual doctor, nurse and TV presenter but with some unusual choices thrown in such as celebrity, WAG and Banker with Bonus. Secondary schools will be ranked on how many learners ultimately achieve their ambition.
The Greatest Day!
On a serious note, did you know that the Guroo guys are offering an incredible prize involving Take That. Get in the mood by clicking here for the official YouTube Take That channel! And our insider (a genuine insider this time) tells us that the new Take That show will be absolutely amazing.
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