Today’s post comes courtesy of Lorna Tyrtania, ThirdForce Senior Product Manager

Functional Skills – View from the Pilot

I’ve just put down a pretty hefty but very encouraging report that evaluates the 3-year Functional Skills pilot.  In all, the report makes for some very positive reading – particularly in terms of how learners and employers perceive these new qualifications.  If you’re short on time, then I think the take-home message is best summed up by this one sentence from the report:

 “Functional Skills are seen as an improvement on the range of existing qualifications, with the potential to better prepare learners for further learning, entry into employment and progression in the workplace.”

The report is extensive, though quite readable, and if you’ve an hour or two to spare, then by all means go ahead and read the whole thing (you can find it on the QCDA website).  But if you’ve little more than a new york minute to spare, here are my four main findings (while still fresh in my mind):

First – and whatever about not being able to please everybody all the time…

1)      Everyone, it seems, likes Functional Skills!

“Most stakeholders consulted thought Functional Skills improved learner readiness for employment, with some citing the increased confidence it instils and the ability to transfer skills as key reasons.”

Employers “Employers familiar with Functional Skills were on the whole positive about them, and see them as covering areas of employee development companies might sensibly require from their wider workforce, and not just apprentices.”

Learners “Functional Skills improved learners’ skills, independent learning, the ability to recognise and articulate the skills they are using, and motivation…learners are far more motivated and engaged with the learning content and felt more positive about the results.”

Practitioners “Practitioners with experience of Functional Skills were very positive about them, seeing the value in the qualifications and seeing them as a good substitute for Key Skills.”

2)      There were issues with the pilot (Well, it’s a pilot, isn’t that the best time for issues?)

If the pilot hadn’t raised some issues, it wouldn’t have been doing its job, which was to robustly test all elements of the proposed new qualifications. Pilot programmes should flush out problems so that they can be fixed up prior to rollout. The main issues raised concerned assessment consistency and delivery.

“Pass rates varied considerably across Awarding Organisations in all three Functional Skills at levels 1 and 2 for the duration of the pilot.”

Awarding Organisations (AOs) were actively encouraged to develop different assessment models throughout the course of the pilot. The real test will be the results from the forthcoming assessment series involving the use of accredited post-pilot assessment models.

“ The development of e-assessment has proven to be a long and challenging process and one that turned out to be unrealistic within the duration of the pilot.”

3)      Little work-based learning participation in the pilot

“There has unfortunately been very little employer engagement in the Functional Skills pilot. The extent to which Functional Skills could be said to have been piloted with this group (and with Apprenticeships generally) is questionable.”

The data showing the breakdown of pilot centres over the three years clearly shows the dominance of schools – work-based learning only accounted for 2% of pilot centres.  Equally, the number of candidates over 19 years of age represented only 5% of the total entries for the summer 2010 assessments.  Overall, there was very little employer participation in the pilot – out of a total of 185,590 assessments for the June 2010 assessment series, only 263 came from employer-based pilots (0.14%).

However there is some light at the end of the tunnel:  “As growing numbers of providers have become more engaged and prepared for Functional Skills, the expression of concerns about the possible uncertainty of Functional Skills for some larger learner groups has become more muted and more providers have reported Functional Skills to be a suitable replacement.”  In ThirdForce, we’ve certainly observed this effect with the employers we’ve worked with!

4)      Some challenges remain – but improvements are on the way

Those critical of Functional Skills usually express doubts about its operational features (for example infrequent assessment, slower reporting times) rather than about the core qualification syllabus and methodology. For apprenticeship and adult candidates, the availability of sufficient, flexible assessment models (technical enhancements) is absolutely key to the successful implementation of Functional Skills.  Issues such as the frequency and length of assessment opportunities and the slow turnaround of results were raised – particularly in relation to learners on roll-on/rolloff programmes and those in work-based learning and apprenticeships.

“Technically enhanced assessments are currently being developed to provide flexibility and accessibility to meet the needs of all learner groups. These are expected to come on stream between September 2011 and 2012.”

The good news is that “by September 2012 six of the Functional Skills Pilot Awarding Organisations (representing 56% of the pilot market share) intend that their systems will be on demand …three AO’s expect to be offering results turnaround of no more than one week.”  Now it probably won’t be easy to improve on this, given that even onscreen assessments still have to be marked by people (which takes time) and given that there will always need to be quality assurance checks before results can be issued.

“Some providers, especially those associated with Apprenticeship and Adult programmes, were concerned about capacity and the accessing of appropriate levels of specialist expertise and the suitability of assessment arrangements.”  

Specialist expertise is something ThirdForce has in abundance with our team of dedicated Learning Support Managers (LSMs), so don’t let that be a barrier to engaging with Functional Skills.

Key lessons learnt

“A range of delivery models had emerged, with the majority comprising hybrid models which involve a combination of discrete Functional Skills teaching and various degrees of embedding and contextualisation.”

Pilot centres identified recommendations based on key lessons learnt, the big ones for me were:

• Use discrete Functional Skills teaching and learning sessions to develop learners’ problem-solving and independent-learning skills.
• Use discrete teaching sessions using real-life contexts and practical exercises to develop learners’ functionality.
• Use rigorous initial diagnostic assessment so that the individual learning needs of each learner can be identified and addressed from the outset.

Well, that description pretty neatly sums up the ThirdForce Functional Skills solution! Talk to us now to learn more or download our WhitePaper which describes the success of our Functional Skills pilot programme. You might be interested in learning how we achieved over 90% pass rates in completion times of 8-12 weeks!