Functional Skills
new curriculum
papers to work to, they can not teach. T is is wrong, very wrong, and students will suff er as they will not have enough experience of using the skills in novel situations.
T e big issue - assessment T ere is more talk, discussion, questions and consternation about assessment of Functional Skills than anything else. Every day we get asked which exam board should we use, which has the best pass rate, which suits 14-year- olds, what is best for apprentices? T is is not surprising. It is only recently
that exam boards have gained accreditation for September 2010 onwards, and you will not fi nd books, past papers, “how to” guides or revision texts to help with Functional Skills because they do not yet exist. Added to this we have the experience of
three years of pilot with varying levels of success reported and, let us be blunt, lots of scare stories from centres with poor results. But what about the exams – surely they are
going to be made easier to pass? T ere are many infl uences that may suggest
this will be the case, all of which I think are hopeful rather than real. I took part in the debate about standards run by Cambridge Assessment back in April. A reasonable consensus emerged that the skills being tested
Delivering Diplomas • Volume 2 No 2 Autumn 2010
today are just as challenging as those in the past. However (and it is a huge however) guidance and signposting make passing easier. T e pressure is great:
• Exam boards want qualifi cations that are easy to mark, because that is more effi cient and cheaper.
• Schools want qualifi cations that carry a high points quota because they are judged by this rather crude measure.
• Colleges want qualifi cations that are easy to accredit because they earn a signifi cant part of their revenue by delivering success in accreditation.
• Students want qualifi cations that give them access to success in the next stage of their life.
• For 15 years, the government wanted to show increasing progression in pass rates. Against this we have employers who do
not really understand, or indeed care much, about qualifi cations so long as their staff can function properly and safely in a work environment – and Higher Education, which has a broadly similar requirement, is backed up with a demand for critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Two interesting questions arise from this:
• Will the new coalition government continue with a strong focus on increasing pass rates, or will they retrench a little
Core of the
and focus not on the paper qualifi cations but on the skills, perhaps taking a hit on the drop in pass rates while teachers and students adapt?
• And will Ofqual, one of the few surviving quangos, take a pragmatic and proactive approach to maintaining the rigour of Functional Skills and focus on equivalence, carrying through with the plan to remove funding for qualifi cations that fall outside of the four learning pathways – Foundation Learning, Apprenticeship, GCSE/A Level and Diplomas?
True functionality Let me leave you with one thought. Being truly functional means knowing what to do in any novel (as opposed to given or planned) situation, so here is a revolutionary idea; scrap past papers altogether and every year (or indeed term) introduce a brand new assessment method which is diff erent to all the previous ones. T at way, we will stop all thoughts of teaching to the test and instead we can all focus on great teaching and giving our young people the best possible start in life.
• Jonathan Wells is managing director of Guroo, a company that develops online learning resources for Functional Skills.
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