New Diploma Resources

Resources for everyone involved with the new diplomas

Spanner mightier than pen in earning power News | Published in FE Focus on 5 November, 2010 | By: Joseph Lee Section: News

Found by Jonathan Wells of Guroo Functional Skills.
Report says BTECs taken with GCSEs add 5.9% more to earnings
Students combining GCSEs and BTECs at level 2 are likely to earn more than those who take academic courses only, a new study shows, challenging claims that low-level vocational qualifications are a soft option.
Vocational courses at level 2 [...]

What is a level 2 qualification?

Posted by Jonathan Wells of Guroo Functional Skills and taken from the TES on 29/10/10
Andy Warhol once said: “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.” His words were in reference to Coca-Cola - a product close to my heart.
Further [...]

Just one in three diploma students pass, says Ofsted By Hannah Richardson

From a BBC report.
Again, Functional Skills seem to be the problem - but is it the qualification, or the way they are addressed?
Only about a third of students who took Labour’s flagship diplomas in England had managed to achieve them two years on, Ofsted has found.
Inspectors said the vocational parts of courses inspired many learners, [...]

Diploma conference report

the front page of Sec-ed carries a report about the Diploma conference last week in Birmingham.
Focus was on diploma qualifications and how they would survive into the future.
click here for the link.

Functional Skills conference

London on Tuesday 16th November.
click here to get to deatils of the Functional Skills event with guroo as main sponsors.

Functional Skills weightings

Delivery information in 2010/11
Functional Skills in English, Mathematics and ICT delivered through 16-18 and
ALR will be unlisted. Where Functional Skills are delivered as part of an
Apprenticeship Framework as a direct replacement for key skills, they will continue
to be listed at 0.08 SLN. This applies to all age Apprenticeships.
Functional Skills in English, Mathematics and ICT delivered [...]

Major Functional Skills conference announced

November 16th, London.
A conference dedicated to functional skills featuring key note speakers from industry, practitioners and ofqual as well as a marketplace featuring all the exam bodies and resource providers.
Book here.

Issues with the costs or complexity?

Picked up by Jonathan Wells of Guroo Functional Skills.
The exam board with the biggest share of the Diploma has called for it to be simplified after figures showed that a disappointingly small number of pupils completed the qualification this year.
Only 3,069 pupils were awarded a full Higher Diploma - judged equivalent to GCSEs - this [...]

Key skills remain for a short period.

Apprenticeship providers can continue using the existing Key Skills programme for literacy and numeracy until March 2011 after protests about the qualifications’ replacement, Functional Skills. The Association of Learning Providers objected that the Functional Skills programme is more classroom- and paper-based, whereas earlier programmes were integrated with practical skills, making them more suitable for apprentices.

Key Skills reprieved for apprentices only.

Taken from the TES on 16th July bu Jonathan Wells of Guroo Functional Skills
Key skills, which are being phased out in favour of functional skills, have won a stay of execution as the Government seeks further discussions on the way forward in apprenticeships.
John Hayes, the further education minister, told the annual conference of the Association [...]

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