Functional Skills replaces Adult Basic Skills in August 2012

News from BIS confirms that Functional Skills will be fully funded and will replace Adult Basic Skills from August 2012.
“BIS wrote to Awarding Organisations in January 2011 to confirm that it will no longer be funding the centrally held test bank which supports Adult Basic Skills (ABS) qualifications and Key Skills Communication and Application of [...]

Guroo exhibiting at Learning & Skills

Guroo Functional Skills will be on stand 223 at the Learning and Skills / Learning Technologies show in Olympia on Wednesday and Thursday this week. We’ll be promoting some great January offers, showing the new ICT diagnostic and how we map everything back to the Functional Skills criteria.

Functional Skills Wednesday Webinar

The Functional Skills Wednesday Webinar will be presented by Stewart Hutton and will focus on an introduction to Guroo Functional Skills.
This webinar is designed to be a top level overview of what Guroo “is” and “does”, focussing on how it can help increase your learners’ chances of success in Functional Skills, and reduce your cost [...]

Apprenticeships - quality vs cost

When we mention apprenticeships, most of us probably 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 [...]

Thousands of school leavers applying to join the Army are being rejected because they cannot spell or solve simple English and maths problems

Thousands of school leavers applying to join the Army are being rejected because they cannot spell or solve simple English and maths problems.
Full story from the Daily Mail here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046995/School-leavers-rejected-Army-spell-simple-sums.html

DfE recommends Functional Skills

Based on level of rigour, assessment arrangements, skills taught and views of employers, the qualifications that we recommend to providers are: functional skills and free standing maths qualifications.
The above comment is taken from the DfE consultation paper about 16-19 study programmes.
The DfE consultation entitled “study programmes for 16-19 year olds” published on [...]

On line testing debate

This is a video of the debate chaired by Education Journalist Warwick Mansell and hosted by Pearson. Makes for an interesting view of on-line testing, especially as Functional Skills is very definitely at the forefront of this technology.

AOC meeting supporting early announcement on Functional Skills

Following on from John Hayes (BIS Minister) confirming that Key Skills will definitely be scrapped and replaced by Functional Skills by September 2012 at the very latest, the AoC got together this week to discuss the implications of the Wolf report.
The general opinion is that despite the Government pushing re-takes of GCSE maths and [...]

Ofqual reveal AO market share

Sometimes what appears to be the dullest report turns up something really interesting. In the Ofqual annual review there is a detailed section on ow the 240,000 Functional Skills qualifications ave been distributed amongst the Awarding organisations.
My reading would suggest that Edexcel are very pleased, AQA are not, OCR and C&G are neither happy [...]

Governments response to Wolf report due this week?

The Telegraph published a story today about the news that students will be reuired to study English and Maths post 16 until they leave college or school.
The BBC has a report from the CBI that bemoans the lack of Functional Skills of students leaving school.
The Daily Mail reported on Saturday 7th May that the Government [...]

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Information, news and resources for everyone involved in 14-19 education in the UK.