Functional Skills


Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more things stay the same. JonathanWells gives us some ideas for developing your delivery of Functional Skills


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ET US be absolutely honest about Functional Skills. It is frustrating, it is hard to teach, it places big demands on the teacher,


it is hard to pass, it is nearly impossible to practise tests, there is no “body of knowledge” to use, plus it is rigorous and demanding. But that does not mean we should not


do it! I would argue that Functional Skills is the underlying core of the new curriculum running through, and intrinsic to, all four learning pathways: Foundation Learning, GCSE/A Level, Apprenticeships and, of course, Diplomas. Need further evidence? Sir Michael Rake,


chairman of BT, is the latest high ranking industrialist to be disappointed by the lack of basic literacy and numeracy skills once taken for granted by employers. “Of 26,000 young people who applied to


join the BT apprenticeship scheme, more than 6,000 were ruled out because they couldn’t spell, read or write properly.” And these were students applying for Level


2 and Level 3 apprenticeships with supposedly five “good” GCSE or equivalent passes. So what is the problem? What is it about Functional Skills


that is causing so much controversy and consternation among education professionals? Te principles are certainly not new –


indeed they go back thousands of years. Te Ancient Greek pedagogue was often


a slave of high learning who led the children of his masters. He was not a teacher as such, instead he is best thought of as a leader, guiding his charges to places – including school – through the streets, looking after their greater wellbeing. We can picture these pedagogues wandering


around their cities, extemporising as they walk, the students in their charge following along, often with no idea of what to expect. I imagine that learning was largely based around the unexpected and almost certainly focused on problem-solving, with the pedagogue drawing on their own experience and knowledge as each new scenario appeared around every corner. Fast forward to the second half of the 20th


century when O levels were introduced to the English education system. Tose of us who remember doing O levels will no doubt recall a relatively unstructured curriculum. We would be taught the skills, often using dry


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theory, but then we would be set a problem to solve, often with the words “explain your method”. O level problems had little guidance,


multiple choice was almost unheard of and students were expected to know how to get started, and what process to follow. At Level 2, Functional Skills is remarkably


similar to how the students learned from the Ancient Greek pedagogue and indeed the principles behind Functional Skills are much closer to O level than GCSE. Successful Functional Skills teachers will


use and implement learning guidelines rather than detailed schemes of work. Tey will forget about teaching to the test and instead will concentrate on making sure than every skill in Functional Skills is learned, practiced and proven so the student is completely secure in its use in any novel situation. Te most difficult area is likely to be the


“novel” situation. Let’s face it, how many times have we shown a student how to do something, they do it, get it right and appear to completely understand. Ten we ask them to use the same skill in a different situation and... So we can take it for granted that


Functional Skills is going to be frustrating. Tat does not mean we should not do it


though. Te best results are the hardest won, and even the harshest critic of Functional Skills and Diplomas will agree that students rather like doing them.


Solutions So how should go about building a successful Functional Skills programme? Let me try to give you some memorable images as pointers.


Ancient Greeks Lead your students, wherever this takes you. Do not be frightened to stray away from the original subject; getting students to secure the skills means getting them to completely understand not just the process but where they are used and of course when to use them.


Meerkats You can’t teach Functional Skills in a contrived way. Tink about the worst types of television sit-com. How bad are the jokes and how much does a programme engage you when compared to the natural problem-solving


approach demonstrated by the stars of Meerkat Manor? Keep it real, do not contrive.


Catherine Cookson Teach the skills, build the skills, then get students to practice the skills in novel situations. What do we mean by novel situations?Take the teaching scenario and change just one or two variables. Build the skills by planning a weekend break to Dublin, then practice by searching for a perfect Spanish summer holiday. And if Catherine Cookson is not your idea of a novelist, why not try...


Dick Turpin Avoid the scaffold, unlike Dick. At Level 2, students should be able to take a problem and a blank sheet of paper, present a reasonable (not always the right or best) plan, use the skills they have secured and deliver a reasonable solution without any help, guidance or scaffolding.


SurAlan Famously practical, Lord Sugar (SurAlan still sounds better to me) is not into teaching the test. Paper qualifications without common sense approaches to solving problems do not impress him. I still meet many teachers who insist that unless they have the real exam


Delivering Diplomas • Volume 2 No 2 Autumn 2010


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