ON LINE TOPIC FUNCTIONAL SKILLS

 … the ability to read, write and speak in English and to use mathematics at a level necessary to function at work and in society in general 

 In December 1999 the Moser Report (summary available at identified that some 6.8m people in the UK had literacy & numeracy skills at a level that prevented them functioning effectively in society.  Effectively this meant that they couldn’t calculate their change in a shop or look up a phone number in Yellow Pages.  From this, the government started its Skills for Life campaign which has now become the Functional Skills agenda.

 A Skills for Life Survey in October 2003, showed the various levels across England & Wales.  You can look up your own areas at w.dcsf.gov.uk/readwriteplus_skillsforlifesurvey/ w.dcsf.gov.uk/readwriteplus_skillsforlifesurvey/  Research shows that a significant number of learners are not succeeding because they lack the functional skills to complete their courses.  This information was also used to inform the 2007 Leith report ‘World Class Skills’ which identified that low Functional Skills were affecting Britain’s economic progress and competitiveness in world markets.

 2011 – 89% of adults to be qualified at least to L1 literacy, 81% qualified to E3 numeracy – that’s an additional 390,000 people gaining an E3 numeracy qualification  % adults to have functional skills in both literacy &numeracy. 90% of adults to have at least a L2 qualification (2005 = 69%)  (Don’t worry, we’re going to explain the different levels in a moment)

 When we begin to look at Functional Skills you will see that they are divided into a number of levels. You may be asked to embed skills into your course at a particular level or you may need to embed skills at different levels to suit different learners.  Literacy – Speaking & Listening, Reading & Writing  Entry 1 – read short texts with repeated language, read common signs/symbols  Entry 2 – read short texts on familiar subjects & obtaining information from short documents, familiar sources  Entry 3 – read short texts on familiar topics independently, obtain information from everyday sources  Level 1 – read straightforward texts of varying length on variety of topics, obtain information from different sources  Level 2 – read & understand texts of varying complexity, independently. Obtain information from different sources.  Details of the skills at each level for numeracy & ICT are available at articles/238-functional-skills-criteria articles/238-functional-skills-criteria

 For those who are already competent in reading, writing & numeracy, it’s often difficult to take a step back and identify the smaller, individual steps we take to complete a task. Take ‘writing’ for example’. How many different purposes do you use writing for.  Take a few minutes to jot down your thoughts here before you move on to the next slide.

 Some examples you might have come up with include:  giving information or instructions  describing something  persuading someone to do/buy something or to agree with your point of view  presenting facts  When we are embedding functional skills we need to try to break down skills into their component parts to support our students in developing each part to make up the full skill.

 To help you break down large topics such as reading, writing or maths into their smaller skills, you might find it helpful to refer to:  assessment-framework/89-articles/238- functional-skills-criteria assessment-framework/89-articles/238- functional-skills-criteria  This site gives the standards & criteria for each of the functional skills broken down into smaller skills and will be useful in helping you identify what learners need in your area & what skills you might embed in your sessions.

 Research has shown that the most successful way to help people improve their functional skills is to do this as part of their main area of study.  For most of us this makes sense as people might not be interested in learning about a topic such as ratios in isolation but, if they learn it on a construction course in connection with mixing concrete, they can see how it is relevant & important for what they want to achieve.

 Embedding functional skills means teaching it as part of your general sessions – not a separate maths or English workshop. (you might also find it called ‘blended learning’)  You teach the skills as they crop up during the general course or to help your learners succeed in particular aspects.  For example, if your students need to write reports or assignments, you might do some general work n this as part of your early sessions.

 More information on the success of embedding functional skills is available at:  asp?ID=73 asp?ID=73  hole_Organisation_Approach.pdf hole_Organisation_Approach.pdf  bedding_final%20_web.pdf bedding_final%20_web.pdf

 Spend some time now trying to identify the functional skills that learners need to succeed in the area you teach in. You might find it easiest here to break this down into reading, writing, language (i.e. speaking & listening), numeracy & ICT skills and have separate lists for each one.  Once you have identified a topic, e.g. writing to complete customer contact cards, try to break this down further. For example, learners might need a knowledge of the 24-hour clock to be able to record customer appointments

 Obviously, the answers you have here will be different depending on your subject but most areas have at least one common skill:  Spelling of specialist vocabulary  So, we’re going to use this as an example of how you might embed a skill into your sessions.

 Spend a few minutes thinking about how you might embed this topic into your general sessions before moving on to the next slide.

 Remember, you don’t have to do all the work yourself. We have already talked about the role of the tutor as a ‘facilitator’ of learning so you could get your students to share ideas on how to remember spellings. Students often learn well from their peers.  Many people use mnemonics to help them remember spellings e.g. necessary – one collar and two socks. You could get your group to work in pairs to make up a mnemonic for given specialist words  You could ask all your students to provide a separate glossary/vocabulary notebook to record new words & their meaning so they have something to refer back to (or see if the organisation could provide the notebooks for them)

 Because embedding functional skills is a national agenda, there are already large numbers of resources out there to help you. Before you start to develop your own resources you might want to take a look at the following:   

‘Explain ways to embed elements of Functional Skills in your specialist area. ’ words +/- 10% As you can see, the word limit for this assignment is very tight so you’re going to need to be really focused in your writing & plan a structure beforehand. Remember, the main point to address here is how you would embed functional skills not just identifying the skills needed.

 I would suggest that you begin your assignment with a paragraph showing that you know what functional skills are & why they are important  You could then go on to include a paragraph outlining the main functional skills necessary in your specialist area  The rest of the assignment should then be devoted to examples of how you would embed these skills (likely to be about 150 words if you use the upper word limit of 250 – and you probably will need to use this upper limit!)

If anything in the PowerPoint is not clear or you would like to discuss any of the points further before working on your assignment, please feel free to contact me: Barbara Hately-Broad (Please note that I am not available on Mondays or Fridays)