Post-16 learners need stepping stone qualifications to build up their confidence and skills before they re-take maths and English GCSEs, claims Carol Snape.

There has been a lot of debate generated by the latest OECD report on numeracy and literacy skills.

But in the rush to blame and shame, are we in danger of missing the key point in this issue — how to meet the learner’s needs?

Issue has been taken with the government’s apparent ignorance of functional skills.

There has also been acknowledgement that, if employers require GCSEs to judge job and, increasingly, apprenticeship applicants’ numeracy and literacy skills, something has to be done.

While that debate may be required, we also need to address the needs of those for whom achieving either of these feels a long way off.

As highlighted by National Institute of Adult Continuing Education chief executive David Hughes, if a learner has already had a bad experience with GCSEs, simply making them retake them is unlikely to see improvement in most cases.

This is why a different approach is required to boost learners’ confidence and address specific areas of weakness.

A key benefit of enabling learners to achieve in small bite-sized chunks is that it can quickly boost their self-esteem and sense of achievement

Indeed this has already been recognised by the Skills Funding Agency, which, in February last year, announced it would fund a new set of English and maths qualifications within the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) to support learners’ progression towards GCSE English and maths A* to C or a level two functional skills qualification.

Such qualifications are now available and should form the basis of adult numeracy and literacy teaching, as they provide the necessary flexibility and responsiveness required by adult learners in particular.

The new QCF English and maths qualifications are bite-sized units of assessment covering the adult core curriculum.

They are designed to allow for targeting of specific needs of learners.

A key benefit of enabling learners to achieve in small bite-sized chunks is that it can quickly boost their self-esteem and sense of achievement.

Experiencing early success through the achievement of a small award in a skill area they had previously struggled with can inspire individuals to continue with the challenge of acquiring more skills.

These qualifications can be used creatively to address the specific needs of learners in different contexts.

This could for example be achieved by embedding them into vocational or academic courses of any length and over any period, or studying them as stand-alone awards.

They could also be used to support family learning, by providing formal recognition of the skills gained by parents learning numeracy or literacy skills to support their children.

Otherwise, they could be used as short, sharp boosters to provide bite-sized focus on weaker areas for students who just missed out on GCSE grade C, helping them to improve those areas while also providing an important confidence boost.

It is this flexibility that will allow learners to take highly personalised progression routes through the framework, moving vertically and/or laterally as they progress.

Giving learners the chance to take these new QCF qualifications can only benefit them and the future economy of the entire country.

Without this change in approach, we risk condemning these learners to repeating the same failures they experienced at school and turning them off learning for life.

Carol Snape, chief executive of
OCN Eastern Region

Plans to put businesses at the heart of future funding arrangements for apprenticeships risk driving away all but the most committed employers, warns Christine Doubleday.

In June 2012, Doug Richard was commissioned by Skills Minister Matthew Hancock to conduct a major review of the apprenticeship system.

The government received his report enthusiastically and, in the summer of 2013, opened a consultation on proposals for reforming apprenticeship funding.

A full apprenticeship reform implementation plan is set to be announced by the end of the year.

The 157 Group responded to the funding consultation, which closed on October 1, and in common with many other key stakeholders — including Association of Employment and Learning Providers, Association of Colleges and Edge — voiced serious concerns about the proposals on the table.

While group members are passionate about apprenticeships as a means of increasing productivity and the future skills base, they urged the government to pause and consider a wider range of proposals to avoid putting at risk the progress that has already been made.  Fortunately, there were signs during consultation meetings that the Department for Business Innovation and Skills is still open to other suggestions.

To improve the current system, we need to add to the options under discussion

Like the government, we are keen for employers to take greater ownership of the skills agenda and be more proactively involved in apprenticeships.

However, the current proposal rests largely on the creation of a new funding mechanism, which gives the employer much more responsibility for accessing and using government money to deliver or buy apprenticeships.

The proposed funding model is based on a core model with three options, two of which put the employer completely centre-stage and a third which involves funding being claimed by providers from the government, only after they have been paid by the employer.

We see major risks in these proposals for the national apprenticeship programme as a whole and urge caution.

In our view, the proposals are based on unrealistic expectations.

Do the great majority of employers, especially small businesses, really have the capacity, desire or skilled people to tackle the bureaucracy and audit requirements associated with apprenticeship funding?

Aren’t many smaller college and training providers likely to abandon their involvement in apprenticeships, in favour of less problematic and more economically viable provision for young people, if they risk delays in payment or reduced fees?

Is it realistic to expect a major new IT-based system to work effectively from day one?

In relation to apprenticeships, employers can be divided into three broad categories — those that are fully committed, those that do not get involved at all and employers that are only weakly committed.

The funding proposals could well lead to the disengagement of all but the most committed group, when we all want more employers to commit.

They represent a needlessly high-risk approach.

Our colleges have long-standing experience of working with small businesses, and this tells us they are looking for simplification and single points of contact rather than more control.

We believe that so fundamental a change should start with a realistic pilot phase, which would allow both mechanisms and their impact to be tested.

Also, there is time to learn from the pilots of Employer Ownership of Skills.

We are still awaiting the full results of these, and we need to learn from this experience before changing apprenticeship funding in a similar way.

Finally, more thought needs to be given to incremental reform of the current system of funding, seeking to improve for example the policing of unscrupulous providers.

We would urge everyone to get involved in the debate about a funding structure that can give apprenticeships fresh impetus.

To improve the current system, we need to add to the options under discussion.

Only in that way we can all go forward with a more robust system, which can fully achieve the potential of apprenticeships as a foundation of economic growth.

Christine Doubleday, deputy executive director of the 157 group

Further education increases justice through its combined economic, social and moral purpose and, says Toni Fazaeli, to do this it needs qualified teachers.

In England, the FE sector aims to tackle social and educational injustices through offering around four million young people and adults a year excellent learning opportunities that give clear routes to good employment and higher levels of study, transforming a very large number of people’s lives for the good.

A soul-searching and proper question to ask is whether we can do even better for our learners, and whether the exercise of any policies or freedoms might lead to increasing any injustices.

A cardinal principle in medicine, credited to Florence Nightingale, is that the first duty of any hospital is to stop the spread of disease.

In FE it is surely to stop any increase in injustices for our learners?

Amartya Sen’s seminal thinking in his book The Idea of Justice helps us think about the tensions between freedom and justice, and identify possible boundaries in further education that should not be crossed because they are likely to increase injustices for learners. Sen argues that the critical assessment in diagnosing injustices involves considerations of freedoms, fairness, capabilities, duty, goodness, resources, happiness, wellbeing and, especially in our sector, learning.

A vital and topical question to consider is whether not having a national policy requiring initial teacher education leading to being professionally qualified constitutes an injustice for those starting to teach, and their learners. A reasoned moral choice has to be made.

Sen argues that reasoned discussion can accommodate conflicting positions, and that bad or weak reasoning needs to be confronted by better reasoning. To draw on weaker arguments that do not increase justice for learners — for example, that leaders in FE should be treated the same as vice-chancellors — is to sidestep what is important.

One person’s freedom can be another’s bond.

The freedom in today’s national policy for a FE employer to decide whether those they employ to teach are trained and become qualified as teachers curtails the freedom of individuals to be trained and become professionally qualified to be the best they can in their practice.

Second, the employer’s current freedom curtails any entitlement for young and adult learners, wherever they are in England, to be taught by individuals who are professionally trained and qualified for their role.

The third very significant impact of this freedom is a reduction in the likelihood of young and adult learners across the nation receiving the strongest chance of high-quality learning and success in their studies and training.

The clear case for the positive difference that initial teacher education makes to the quality of teaching is articulated in the Institute for Learning’s recently published collection of voices and evidence from the sector, “Should teaching qualifications be left to chance?”

These three major considerations show that the freedom currently given to employers will inevitably lead to an increased injustice for learners nationally, and also for teachers.

To test this thinking further, let us look at a parallel context. Which chief executives of hospitals are baying for the freedom to recruit unqualified surgeons, unqualified doctors or unqualified nurses?

Such freedom for individual hospitals as employers would surely lead to injustice for patients nationally, as well as undermining the credibility and public trust in our country’s hospital system.

In a House of Lords discussion recently about the employment of unqualified teachers in state schools, Baroness McIntosh pointed out “knowledge, enthusiasm and, indeed, natural gifts may be necessary but they are not sufficient in developing professional competence”.

We would not disagree if we were talking about train drivers or brain surgeons, she suggested, so why are teachers an exception?

Just as members of the public have certain expectations of health service professionals, I believe that parents, learners, businesses and communities have the right to expect consistent, high-quality teaching and learning, delivered by qualified teachers, as an unassailable contribution to economic, moral and social justice in our society.

Toni Fazaeli, chief executive of the Institute for Learning