Level 3 Functional Maths?

This is just level 3 Functional Maths.
Part of the original plan but never implemented (until now).
It does mean that at Guroo Functional Skills, we have a great base to move forward though!

Functional Skills Newsletter Oct 30th

October 30th - the Functional Skills newsletter

A varied selection of news and resource items in this newsletter.  We start with news from the Guroo guys that the on-line Functional Skills screener/level checker is now up and running at www.myfunctionalskills.co.uk and also details about new videos designed to help learners new to Guroo and tutors getting the best from a free trial.

Also in the news this week, two items from Ofsted and LSIS – the first about good practice in integrating Functional Skills and the second some research about the importance of Functional Skills in the curriculum.  There are links to both areas. 

And finally we have news of this week's webinar which will go ahead on Wednesday at 4.00pm – a look at the new on-line Functional Skills Level Checker/Screener service available at www.myfunctionalskills.co.uk   Plus we have links to previous webinar recordings too – a reminder that you will need to login as a guest and the password is always password.

As always, your comments and thoughts are appreciated - let us know what you'd like us to cover in the newsletter by emailing the editor - jwells@guroo.co.uk

On-line Functional Skills level checker/screener goes live along with new free trial support and learner videos.

We don't normally lead on a story from our sponsors Guroo, but this one is quite a biggie.

The Guroo guys have released an on-line version of the Functional Skills Level Checker/Screener.  Available at www.myfunctionalskills.co.uk and linked to your existing site codes, the system does not require a user login and so can be used as a pre-course screener or as part of an interview process.

All existing Guroo customers can try the on-line version for free - just email info@guroo.co.uk and we'll add 100 assessment credits and send you the associated guidance document.

Also new from Guroo are learner and tutor support videos.  They have been produced in-house, using a mixture of video, animation and screen tracking.

Click here for the "new learners guide to Guroo"

Click here for the "tutors guide to getting the best from a Guroo free trial"

Click here for the "short guide to using My Functional Skills level checker/screener"

Ofsted good practice resources - integrating Functional Skills into apprenticeships

Now that Functional Skills and GCSE are the only two funded maths and English qualifications for apprenticeships, it's good to see good case study material being released.  We spotted this one on the Ofsted site.

Click here for the link where both word and pdf versions of the Skills and Development Alliance shared approach to combining Functional Skills teaching with training for customer service skills in hospitality.

Functional Skills under the spotlight

Barking and Dagenham College's Tinyan Akin-Omoyajowo has new findings on how functional skills classes are presented to learners.

Click for a link to the LSIS research that confirms that curriculum design and how we present information about functional skills determines how well learners engage.  Key points and issues to draw from the research include:

• Not highlighting the relevance of Functional Skills to learners everyday lives made it difficult for learners to relaise that FunctionalSkills were an integral part of their course.
  
  
• Timetabling classes at the end of day, before lunch or on days when learners were not due in college gave them an excuse not to attend classes
  
  
• Where prospectus information did not highlight Functional Skills, or the interview process didn't stress the importance, learners viewed the classes as odd-ons with no relevance to their chosen vocation.

Wednesday Webinar at 4.00pm

This week’s webinar is entitled "On-line Functional Skills Level Checker/Screener".  Jonathan will take you through a 15 minute look at the new on-line service available at www.myfunctionalskills.co.uk  This is a low cost, streamlined and very effective way to get a good idea of a learners potential without the time and effort for a full initial assessment and diagnostic.

Email info@guroo.co.uk for joining instructions and then join Jonathan on Wednesday at 4.00pm  

Previous webinars are recorded and available anytime for playback - login as a guest and the password is password.  Simply click on the links below and don’t forget, if you’d like to have your own 1:1 webinar looking at how Guroo can help you support Functional Skills, just call us on 0191 305 5045 or email info@guroo.co,uk and we’ll take it from there.

Getting the best from your Guroo free trial

The differences between Key Skills/SfL and Functional Skills

What you really have to know about Functional Skills for Senior Managers

Functional Skills in the Revised Common Inspection Framework

Guroo group and user admin

Sorry NUT, that's just ridiculous

I have just hear the NUT spokesperson saying that in Secondary Schools teachers don't need to be able to do maths and English if they specialise in other subjects.  How many other people people find this ridiculous?

Teachers being able to do Maths and English

Why is the story about potential teachers having to face a tougher basic (or Functional) maths and English test before starting training?  Surely the story should be about how it ever happened in the first place?

Making Sense of Functional Skills Newsletter Oct 16th

October 16th - the Functional Skills newsletter

Functional Skills use has really take off in the past couple of weeks.  The Guroo guys recorded a massive increase in usage.  Just last week, nearly 5000 new learners logged onto Guroo for the first time and the market is seeing new entrants all the time.  This week we report on the Virtual College e-Apprenticeship offer.

There’s lots of talk around funding and we know that the SFA are looking at Functional Skills funding, so a great time to summarise basic funding rates across all sectors. 

We’ve also got news of which exam boards are chosen by you, the result’s may very well surprise you given that there are now 16 exam boards offering the Functional Skills qualification.  They also make pleasant reading for the exam boards with high levels of customer satisfaction.

And finally we have news of this week’s webinar which will go ahead on Wednesday at 4.00pm – how to get the best from a Guroo Free Trial.  Very relevant given that the Guroo guys are reporting up to 5 new registrations per day, plus we have links to previous webinar recordings too.

As always, your comments and thoughts are appreciated - let us know what you'd like us to cover in the newsletter by emailing the editor - jwells@guroo.co.uk

ITE Grant and Functional Skills funding rates across sectors

A quick reminder that a fee award of £1,500 is available for up to 1,000 applicants training as subject specialists to teach English and maths (including Functional Skills). 

Click here for the link to the document on the excellence gateway.

2012/13 funding rates for Functional Skills depends on the sector, the age of the learner, the type of learning undertaken and the subject with additional variations for location and demographics of intake. To complicate matters further, rates for FE Colleges are unlisted for 2012/13 so can only be quoted as the glh equivalent and 19+ Apprenticeships have 12.5% of co-funding.  Nevertheless, the table below shows the basic rates but is it important to check with your funding agency your precise formula and rate.

As I understand it, what the table does show is that learners who achieve level 1 in an Apprenticeship who then go onto Level 2 through choice are funded at the higher workplace standalone qualification rate.

Type of delivery	Age	Value	Notes
Workplace	Any	£314	Standalone qual
Workplace	16-18 Apprenticeship	£224
Workplace	19-24 Apprenticeship	£183
Workplace	25+ Apprenticeship	£146
Classroom	16-18 School	£327
Classroom	16-18 College	£9.08 per glh	Unlisted qual
Classroom	19+ College	£5.81 per glh	Unlisted qual

Massive upturn in Functional Skills take-up

Functional Skills and GCSE are the ONLY funded and accredited qualifications for Maths and English to Level 2.  The last few weeks has seen a massive increase in the use of resources to support Functional Skills, including a new service from the Virtual College.

This combines the best pre-apprenticeship recruitment solution with on-line apprenticeship resources combined with Guroo’s Functional Skills resources and optional technical certificates mapped to the QCF.

The Apprenticeship eAcademy run by Virtual College includes:

1. Pre-apprenticeship & Recruitment – Including learner profiling, with specific aptitude tests for Business Administration, Health and Social Care and Customer Service. These resources can halve recruitment time and costs, but also add value to the employers you work with and build your brand awareness.
2. Functional Skills – A complete solution powered by Guroo Functional Skills. Initial assessment and full diagnostics, teaching and learning resources and a system that provides a series of profiles showing learner progression in Maths, English and ICT.
3. Foundation Level – 6 courses including: Apprentice Induction, Learner Charter Equality and Diversity, Personal Learning and Thinking Skills (Including initial self-assessment), Employee Rights and Responsibilities and Introduction to Health and Safety.
4. Technical Certificates – Content mapped to the QCF to support technical certificates in Business Administration, Health and Social Care, Customer Service and Manufacturing frameworks and then mapped to your awarding body.

Find out more here.

Which exam board?

As part of the annual Functional Skills survey, one of the questions we asked was about which exam board was used. From the 197 completed responses, only three companies achieved more than 5% responses.

The two biggest were Pearson and City&Guilds each with 35% market share of the respondents, OCR were third at 15% with "all the rest" making up the other 15%.

The research also shows that customer perception of the exam boards is very positive with 84% either very happy or quite happy with their choice and this almost certainly shows that the innovation shown by the exam boards is delivering a very good customer experience.  

Wednesday Webinar at 4.00pm

This week’s webinar is entitled "Getting the best from the Guroo free trial".  Every day we get up to 5 new registrations to use the Guroo Free Trial system so we thought it would be great idea to do a snappy webinar as a guide to getting the best from your free trial, presented by Jonathan Wells. 

Email info@guroo.co.uk for joining instructions and then join Jonathan on Wednesday at 4.00pm  

Previous webinars are recorded and available anytime for playback.  Simply click on the links below and don’t forget, if you’d like to have your own 1:1 webinar looking at how Guroo can help you support Functional Skills, just call us on 0191 305 5045 or email info@guroo.co,uk and we’ll take it from there.

The differences between Key Skills/SfL and Functional Skills

What you really have to know about Functional Skills for Senior Managers

Functional Skills in the Revised Common Inspection Framework

Guroo group and user admin  

Functional Skills Newsletter Oct 2nd

October 2nd - the Functional Skills newsletter

This week we have news on Functional Skills within the Revised CIF and we think this is  important that we've also developed this week's Wednesday Webinar around the subject - tomorrow's is entitled "Functional Skills in the Revised Common Inspection Framework ".  We acknowledge David Sykes of the The Skills Network who wrote the original presentation and gave us permission to adapt it to a 20 minute webinar format.

We have a link to a good blog from Roger Francis who argues the case strongly for Functional Skills and now that Key Skills and SfL are definitely RIP, a summary of the Guroo offer for Functional Skills including details of how to access the free trial.

As always, your comments and thoughts are appreciated - let us know what you'd like us to cover in the newsletter by emailing the editor - jwells@guroo.co.uk

Revised Common Inspection Framework

With thanks to David Sykes of The Skills Network

English and maths and therefore Functional Skills feature heavily in the Revised CIF.  Key differences include:

• Greater emphasis on teaching, learning and assessment
• Development of English/maths and employability skills
• Increased observation of teaching, learning, skills development and assessment
• A bigger focus on learner progress relative to start point and goals including rates of progress and the progression of different groups of learners, less focus on outcomes
• Progression to destinations including higher levels of study and employment
• More use of tracking the learner journey, evaluating learning materials and technology and what learners can do
  
  

Tomorrow's Wednesday Webinar at 4.00pm will focus on the Revised CIF with more detail around the above points.  email info@guroo.co.uk to get joining details.

So why do Functional Skills, anyway?

A really interesting blog post by Roger Francis who poses the above question and then does a very good job in answering it!

Click here to read the article.

RIP Key Skills and SfL.

You can no longer register learners for Key Skills and SfL in any funded programme.  The only funded qualifications for English and maths are now Functional Skills and GCSE.

Just a quick reminder of the services that Guroo does provide for Functional Skills.

Guroo is a company that is dedicated solely to Functional Skills.  It is very easy to become a customer and get your SITE CODE and this costs as little as £325.  Once you are a customer, you get access to the pdf version of the Functional Skills Level Checker and then you can add any number of user licences to use the on-line initial assessment, diagnostic and teaching & learning resources.  We have on-line and paper based products covering the full learner journey. 

A Paper Based Functional Skills Level Checker for Maths and English developed by Guroo and ideal for use as part of a pre-course assessment or interview process – takes about 10 minutes to do, and produces a good guide to the level that the learner is currently operating at.

An on-line Initial Assessment producing a detailed Functional Skills Diagnostic.  Takes around 50 minutes per subject (we do all three subjects) and is completed on-line and automatically marked.  The diagnostic details performance against the Functional Skills criteria in all subjects.  The test is adaptive with learners starting at E3 then adapting according to performance and has randomisation and variability built in so the assessment can be done several times without learners becoming good at the test rather than the skills.

Try if for FREE here.

A massive bank of teaching and learning resources.  Mainly on-line interactive and based around 130 “challenges” each with several learning tasks.  The tasks can also be downloaded as pdf’s for printing and use off line and again cover all levels and all three subjects.

Customers pay an establishment fee which is a on-off fee.  You then buy licences based on number of users or tests according to what you need.  It is not an annual subscription, use stays as long as your learner or tutor is with you. Establishment fees start as low as £325 and indeed, customers who only wish to use the Paper Based Functional Skills Level Checker pay just £325 for the licence providing they choose to print the test papers out themselves.

Guroo customers get access to the Level Checker free of charge if they wish to print out the tests themselves or can buy sets of tests in bulk for ease of use and indeed to save money, as our sets often cost less than printing yourself!  We’re also producing an automatically marked on-line version too, again access is limited to licenced customers.  Prices for the on-line test are 50p per set (Maths and English), the paper based version can be supplied in a 100 pack for £75 which contains 100 x English, 100 x Maths and marking/guidance notes for each subject.  A 250 pack is just £150, almost certainly than printing in house.

Contact info@guroo.co.uk for anything to do with Functional Skills.

Wednesday Webinar at 4.00pm

Access last fortnight's recording on "Key Differences between Functional Skills and Key Skills" here. 

This weeks webinar is entitled "Functional Skills in the Revised CIF" and is a more detailed look at the changes to CIF than the main points above and how they affect English and maths Functional Skills. 

Please email info@guroo.co.uk for joining instructions.

Today's the day .....

5 Years after Functional Skills was launched in pilot form, today is the day that Functional Skills finally and irrevocably replaces Key Skills and SfL in all teaching and learning programmes.
A small cheer I think!
Jonathan Wells of Guroo Functional Skills.