Tuesday 30 March 2010

FS news Mar 30

Our bi-weekly look at the world of Functional Skills.

A special Easter edition featuring accredited exam boards (and an explanation of why English Level 2 isn't there) and the new DCSF policy statement about Functional Skills.

Accredited exam boards for FS announced! The table below shows who got through. We were surprised by the rather short list so we did a little investigation and we believe the reasons are:

  • In the past, qualifications could be accredited "with conditions", this no longer happens
  • So even where a very minor change is required, until that change is made, the qualification will not be accredited hence the rather short list
  • The next date for submissions is 31st May with announcement by end July when we expect lots more exam boards will make it in time for a September start

DCSF make it clear. DCSF have taken the opportunity to restate the Functional Skills position. Two things caught our eye:

"We expect schools to give all young people the opportunity to take stand-alone Functional Skills qualifications by the end of Key Stage 4, alongside GCSEs and any other qualifications they may be taking. This is because only Functional Skills qualifications can provide a guarantee that a young person has the full range of functional skills in a subject"

"Functional Skills qualifications in English, mathematics and ICT and the underpinning curriculum changes in schools will provide a single ladder of progression in these skills, from Key Stage 3 upwards"

Click here for the full statement.



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Monday 29 March 2010

Astonishing exam budget

I couldn't quite believe this when i saw it in the paper. The exam market for GCSE, A Level and vocational qualifications is worth £930million a year.
The number of qualifications has grown from just under 3,000 to nearly 10,000 in just 10 years as there is growing tendency to accredit just about everything as well.
But it's the value that gets me - £900million - WOW.

Friday 26 March 2010

More Functional Skills?

Functional Skills for University?

The Guardian reported today that Sir Michael Sykes's review (March 2010) recommended that a Conservative government consult with universities to see if they wanted students to take a standardised university admissions test, similar to the American SAT, to be taken as well as A-levels. It would measure language, maths and reasoning skills.

Language Maths and Reasoning - sounds very "functional" to me!

Wednesday 24 March 2010

Guroo newsletter March 23

Our bi-weekly look at the world of Functional Skills.

Functional Skills and Foundation Learning budgets, getting employers involved, Delivering Diplomas Magazine issue 2 out now, news from the official line and a teeny advert from the Guroo guys.

At last - money for Functional Skills! DCSF have made an early announcement about the 14-19 support package for next financial year and it recognises the importance of Foundation Learning and Functional Skills.

"The main purpose of this grant is to enable you to prepare for Diploma delivery; however, we recognise that you want more flexibility to spend this funding in the way that will best help you prepare to deliver the reforms. Therefore, this year, you can also use some of this grant to prepare to deliver Foundation Learning and Functional Skills where this best meets your local needs."

More details from here - click through to the letter for actual amounts allocated.

It's food and drink for employer engagement. A criticism often heard is "will employers care, understand and take account of Functional Skills qualifications. The UK's biggest private employer (Tesco) is already on-board, and this story is a typical example of the moves to inform HR professionals across the country.

Delivering Diplomas Spring 2010 just published. Published to coincide with an excellent conference last week, the 52 page magazine is available here. Anyone who cares to respond to me at jwells@guroo.co.uk with nominations for the best article may very well win a couple of mugs, pens, badges and anything else with the guroo logo we have in the office that we can fit into a bag and post!

The official line. QCDA seem to have forgotten to place their latest newsletter on their website, the latest DCSF 14-19 newsletter, a similar offering from LSIS.

Accredited exam boards? We're still waiting for the accreditation announcement (due 19th March) about which boards have been approved to set Functional Skills assessments from September. We'll let you know when we've got it.

VLE flavours and Stewart "flexibility" Hutton? Finally a teeny advert for Guroo. The guys in the basement at Guroo Towers would like you all to know that the SCORM versions of Guroo resources are now up and running on a variety of VLEs including Moodle, itsLearning, Fronter and Sharepoint variants such as Kaleidos and LP+. Stewart (Sales Director) would like you to know that we have special March offers and that flexibility is his middle name. shutton@guroo.co.uk will get his attention.



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Monday 22 March 2010

Boring or just badly written?

I was privileged to be on the panel of a functional skills workshop at the SecEd diploma conference last week. Also on the panel were two year 11s who described the maths functional skills assessment as "boring".
They were asked to work out how many disabled parking spaces and regular parking spaces could be put into a car park. You know, that common problem that we're faced with every day.
How ridiculous to ask this - it's not functional, it's not common, it has no bearing on real life and it's certainly boring.

Come on exam bodies, get real and start setting problems that reflect today's problems - if we do this, we'll loose the boring ticket and get back to where functional skills should be.

And if you want a look at some real problems - get a look at the Guroo Functional Skills resources. We've spent ages trying to aim these at the 14-19 market and we ensure they aren't boring at all. www.guroo.info is the place to go.

Tuesday 16 March 2010

Punitive cuts

Written by Andrew Mourant
The Guardian 16/3/10
featuring quotes by yours truly - always good to have an opinion.

What price a decent education for those in jail, one that could help offenders to go straight? The government says prison education is a priority. But prison reformers are worried about the future as it has emerged that the country's biggest provider of prison education plans to cut 300 jobs around the country.

Contracts to deliver education in more than 90 – around 60% – of the country's penal institutions are run by The Manchester College. Last year, the college extended its prison teaching empire after successful bids for new contracts. But some months after the deals were done it discovered, according to a letter to staff from Peter Tavernor, the principal, that the contracts were "financially challenging ... due to unforeseen hidden costs that could not have been reasonably anticipated".

In December, TMC imposed a pay freeze on prison education staff. The college now says it needs to save £5m across the service. In a letter to staff, Tavernor said that redundancies would be necessary. This would be a "managed process", focusing primarily on management and higher-paid staff; and also those approaching retirement or of post-retirement age.

Consultation over the proposed redundancies has begun. The University and College Union, which represents lecturers, says prolonged uncertainty means that many classroom lecturers have lost heart and says it fears problems could be caused by the loss of more senior managers who support less experienced colleagues in the service. "They play a crucial role in mentoring and helping them handle difficult learners," one official says.

Someone who has already seen the impact on morale is Jonathan Wells, who runs software development company Guroo and trains lecturers in prisons and young offender institutions in the north-east, where prison education is now run by TMC. "I have been in a dozen [institutions] and what I'm hearing from people is 'we have absolutely no idea if we will have a job in two months' time, so we don't know why we should bother planning for curriculum change'. They say they can't plan anything beyond the next month."

Wells says lecturers fear bigger classes. "In a room of eight, you have eight different problems and you need eyes in the back of your head. You could end up with having 10 to keep an eye on, so things will be at least 20% worse, and exponentially it could be even more serious."

In December 2008, the standard of prison education delivered by Olass, the offender learning and skills service, was condemned by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. However, last December, prisons minister Maria Eagle told the Guardian: "If you look at offender learning ... there is a good story to tell."

That was a month before TMC announced its redundancies. Eagle's office has declined to discuss the possible consequences. "The Learning and Skills Council [LSC] are responsible for Manchester College and are therefore better able to assist," a spokeswoman said.

The LSC said in a statement: "The college is contractually obliged, in accordance within the agreed service requirements, to ensure it meets the needs of both young people and adults in custody." A spokesperson said the LSC was not able to comment on the college's staffing arrangements. "It's responsible for decisions necessary to ensure delivery of the service. The LSC will, through its contract management, monitor this."

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, feels any cutbacks are short-sighted amid reoffending rates of around two-thirds. "The prisoners' perception of education, learning and skills is as a kind of oasis," she says.

Pat Jones, director of the Prison Education Trust, says the prospect of redundancies raises questions about the contracting process. "Why did things go wrong so quickly?" she asks.

The Conservatives' shadow prisons minister, Alan Duncan, says: "If I were prisons minister I would want to see how the contracts are worked out, how they were drawn up, what Manchester's obligations are and whether the prisons service has been left in the lurch. This looks as if it will need a serious post mortem."

The LSC said that in December TMC decided to withdraw from offender learning contracts in the south-east and north-east. "LSC entered into these in good faith, with every confidence that the college would be able to deliver, given their extensive experience in delivery of offender learning and the opportunity they had to conduct due diligence," a spokeswoman said. However, TMC later withdrew the threat after the LSC made £2m available to cushion the cost of redundancies.

TMC declined to elaborate on what "unforeseen hidden costs" caused problems with the contracts won last year.

However, the college, which formed in 2008 when Manchester College of Arts and Technology (Mancat) and City College merged, was "in a strong position" to tender, as the latter college had been "a high-quality provider of offender learning," a spokeswoman said.

"Its experience and successful track record presented an unprecedented opportunity to influence quality and policy around the education of offender learners. The college achieved the first ever Ofsted grade 1 for its provision at Askham Grange [prison and young offenders institution]."

She said college finances were "currently robust, although with major funding cuts it needs to protect its financial health and avoid destabilisation in the future". Additional savings and efficiencies were needed that could result in up to 250 staffing reductions within offender learning, less than 7% of the workforce.

"Much work is being undertaken to ensure the long-term viability of an effective learner-focused service, and there will be no compromise on quality," she said. The college was recently awarded Investors in People accreditation, which covered offender learning. Moreover, there had been "an excellent response" to registering interest in voluntary severance, which would help to cut compulsory redundancies, she added.


Monday 15 March 2010

Jonathan Wells writing more articles!

In the very excellent Delivering Diplomas magazine this term. A magazine produced by SecEd aimed at all things 14-19, Diplomas, Functional Skills, PLTS and so on. check out the Jonathan Wells article about Functional Skills.

Also available on the guroo website.

Here's the link to the magazine for you all!

Friday 12 March 2010

60% of staff

I was just reading a tender from LSIS about 14-19 education opportunities that Guroo Functional Skills could get involved in.
Something jumped out at me - how would you deliver the services with just 60% of the staff!
is this a sign of things to come in the sector?

Thursday 11 March 2010

Functional Skills Newsletter March 9th

Our bi-weekly look at the world of Functional Skills.

Are QCDA on a productivity bonus, Functional Skills in the School Report Card, brand new "Functional Skills in ...." booklets, Lisa needs your help and that link to the early demise of ALAN again.

QCDA's big Functional Skills push. A 16 page Functional Skills supplement published with the SecEd magazine and four brand new QCDA videos focused on Functional Skills case studies in GCSE, Diplomas, Apprenticeships and Foundation Learning. That's a lot from QCDA in two weeks!

Votes for the School Report Card? At a lively seminar at ASCL last week the official line as well as the general consensus was that the School Report Card was definitely coming with the big discussion (argument) over the use of a single overall "grade". Labour think yes, Conservative are probably no. And with the next meeting of the SRC "committee" not until June - where do your votes go? Whatever happens, there are four minimum sets of KS4 indicators with level 2 maths and English Functional Skills included. Click here for the SRC prospectus - the extract below comes from page 23, paragraph 60.

More subject publications, more Diploma videos. Developing Functional Skills in music, history, citizenship, MFL, RE, geography, art, science are all covered in a series of brand new national strategies produced booklets that also cover KS3. And not content with the pathways videos, QCDA have added some more line of learning specific videos about work experience in Construction, Engineering and Hospitality Diplomas to their YouTube site.

Lisa needs some help! "I was thrilled to discover this Functional Skills forum, after spending months deliberating over the most appropriate ways in which to deliver functional skills (English). Can anybody offer me any advice and guidance on how to produce effective contextualised resources, for the teaching of functional skills to Hairdressing Level 1 Students and Introductory Diploma in Art and Design Students?" We've started the ball rolling at http://www.functionalskills.org/showthread.php?p=4723#post4723 Please feel free to add your suggestions.

ALAN is leaving the building.... The most popular click through ever on this newsletter was recorded last time out with the story about the demise of ALAN for 14-19. Just to remind everyone that "providers are now expected to deliver functional skills qualification for young people where ever possible" Click here for the link.



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Friday 5 March 2010

Politics - will change actually happen?

6 months ago, whenever we met a school, a key discussion was "what will happen when the Tories get in".
That isn't happening as much now. Some people who were banking on a Political change are clearly starting to get a little worried that it may not happen.
I'm not for a second saying that it will or won't, just feels the outcome is much less clear cut than everyone thought before.


Monday 1 March 2010

An upturn in Diploma activity

Is it the election, the time of year perhaps, or something else, whatever it is there's be an upswing in press on Diplomas.

Diplomas have a colourful future

The TES reports a robust argument for Diplomas from three senior figures. I especially like the comment at the end "robust and challenging qualification". Keep it like that and Diplomas will succeed!

Save NEETs by swapping school for FE
Another TES report looks at NEETS, a very sensible idea in my view. Allow students the chance to transfer to vocational education at aged 15 - what can be wrong with this?
And on the same page, Marco Pierre White praises Apprentices as if to provide more evidence for the case.
And running throughout the FE section is the regular story about FE teachers earning less.

Sir Mike Tomlinson gets after the Academic Diplomas
With what looks like a warning shot across the bows to the Politicians. Now this could (if you'll pardon the pun) be all academic, simply because academic diplomas may never see the light of day, certainly in their current form. Nevertheless, it can't be good news if the chief architect of much of the 14-19 curriculum gets on the wrong side so early!

And something else I noticed is that if you're regarded as a poor school, your differentiators to attract staff are somewhat limited. So being able to offer more/better/different training could very well become a key differentiator. So a great idea from the TDA.