1. Functional Skills

2. Functional Skills
‘Functional’ – providing learners with the skills and abilities they need to take an active and responsible role in their communities, everyday life, the work place and educational settings.
Defintions straight from standards site
Functional mathematics requires learners to use mathematics in ways that make them effective and involved as citizens, operate confidently and to convey their ideas and opinions clearly in a wide range of contexts

3. Functional Skills
‘Functional’ – providing learners with the skills and abilities they need to take an active and responsible role in their communities, everyday life, the work place and educational settings.
Functional English requires learners to communicate in ways that make them effective and involved as citizens, to operate confidently and to convey their ideas and opinions clearly.
Again, straight from Standards

4. Functional Skills
2005 – Functional skills is announced as integral to the 2010 curriculum changes
2007 – various models considered
2008 – most likely model to be adopted is a hurdle – without L2 functional numeracy or literacy, grade C will not be awarded in Maths or English
This is what we were understood to be the situation. Time at Maths Subject leaders day has been given over to this.
Then …

5. Functional Skills
2nd April OfQual decide that functional skills as a hurdle is not fair.
2nd April Jim Knight MP writes to OfQual and states that they ‘still expect students to achieve a Level 2 functional qualification in Maths and English’
The reason it is not fair is that there would not be parity between equivalent qualifications in England compared to Wales and Scotland. …
Despite this gov’t are still keen.
As usual, these things are announced the day we break up for a holiday!

6. Functional Maths
April 2009 – New Subject Criteria for 2010 (exam 2012) are released stating that …
GCSE assessments in mathematics must allocate a weighting of per cent on higher tier and per cent on foundation tier for the functional elements of mathematics.
This is now the official line…
As you can see, as well as students being expected to get functional maths and english, it will also be part of the 2010 GCSE’s. This in on top of new GCSE maths specs in
2003, 2007, 2008, 2009!

7. Functional Maths Level 1 Less familiar situations
Non – routine aspects to the situation
Choice of method or procedure
Models need to be selected and adapted
Guidance given, but autonomous decisions are required
Some of the key apsects of Level 1

8. Functional Maths Level 2 Unfamiliar contexts
The maths required may not be obvious
Non routine aspects
Methods may involve several steps, and may require identification of underlying structure
Guidance may be provided, but choices are independently made and evaluated
The key thing with both of these is the unfamiliar contexts and non routine nature of what they are asked. It is problem solving in its wider sense,
Thus there is no way of “teaching to the test”
These skills however are transferable and if we get it right it should improve their ability to identify what information is required and what to do with it
Here is an example of a Level 2 question…

9. Functional Maths – an example
Here is the context.
Whilst it is something recognisable, it is not familiar. There is a lot of information to take in!
It goes on…

10. Functional Maths – an example
5 minutes planning
Here is the data. You will see there is a reasonable amount.
The question is … Not really a question, more a hypothesis to test.
Is all the data relevant? (No) How long do you get??... Planning time … Doing time.
There are three tasks in the 75 minute exam.
This is not a trivial task, but the skills that could be used could also be used to analyse scientific or geographical data.
Examiners report
Virtually all candidates were able to make a start and most recognised which aspects of the given information needed investigation. However there were few instances of full credit being given. This was frequently the result of giving no numerical data to support purely qualitative arguments and in some cases extraneous information relating to human nutrition and health. A large minority of candidates simply made reference to the self-evident fact that “exercise
loses weight”. A disappointing number of candidates merely compared numbers of those subjects who lost weight, disregarding the fact the there were unequal numbers of subjects in each. Indeed a few candidates solved this problem by using the random number facility on their calculators to remove some subjects to give equally sized data sets. This showed a high mathematical capability, but worrying in that using mean values which was a more direct and possibly more valid method was not even considered or mentioned in passing. Weight loss was essentially the only feature investigated, with only the occasional reference to the possibility that age might be a factor worth considering. No other relevant observations about size of the data base or other points of possible significance were mentioned. There were no meaningful remarks relating to the checking or reasonableness of calculated results.
This task shows quite nicely why we choose to do GCSE Stats …
20 minutes
doing

11. GCSE Statistics
In addition many students are studying GCSE Statistics.
Statistics
Maths
Higher Statistical techniques
Number
Algebra
Geometry
Data Handling
Statistics is a whole GCSE, but with only half the extra content. This puts Maths more on a par with English’s 2 GCSE’s and Science’s two (for the majority) GCSE with their 8 lessons.
As a subject, it has knock on benefits into sciences and social sciences, as many of the techniques taught here are later used, for example in A level Psychology or Geography coursework.
One of the ways we intend to alter the way we teach this course, is to make it even more transferable, with an emphasis on skills as much as on mere knowledge
This also puts us on a par with …
English, who have long had 2 subjects
Science, who have 8 lessons and do 1,2 or 3 subjects.

12. GCSE English Literature
All students take 3 qualifications:
Functional
Skills
GCSE
English
GCSE English Literature
Sets 1 – 6. OR
Entry Level
Sets 7,8,9.

13. Functional English
To enable students to communicate in ways that make them effective and involved as citizens to operate confidently and to convey their ideas and opinions clearly.
3 skill areas:
Speaking and Listening
Reading
Writing

14. Functional English Emphasis on ‘real life’ situations
Transferable skills
Level 2:
Students must show accuracy and judgement in making the right choices to communicate effectively in a particular context.
They must show an organised approach and evaluate usefulness of a range of texts and information sources as well as make choices in terms of style, vocabulary, presentation and format.
They must demonstrate problem-solving skills in applying their knowledge in unfamiliar contexts.

15. Functional English
Speaking and Listening: articulating views effectively in discussions, presentations.
Reading: summarise a text succinctly; extract relevant information effectively across a variety of texts; detect point of view; implicit meaning and bias.
Writing: write concisely and clearly across a wide range of formats on paper and on screen; use correct spelling, punctuation and grammar; adapt style and format to suit audience; context and purpose.

16. Functional English – an example