Development projects
The Functional Skills Support Programme has funded 27 development projects to drive the ongoing improvement of functional skills delivery. Each project has produced materials, information and resources that will benefit all kinds of functional skills centres.
The projects are listed below. Outcomes include teaching resources, mapping documentation and CPD activities. There is a "Use it!" section for each outcome that gives ideas about how to use and adapt these approaches in your own centre.
Please remember that each outcome was developed for a particular centre and its own learners' needs, but feel free to adapt any resource for your own centre.
You can also share your own materials and ideas with others in the FSSP website forum.
Centre
Project
Theme
Outputs
Acorn Training delivers a variety of training programmes in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and throughout the East Midlands. The programmes include Apprenticeships, NVQs, E2E and programmes for schools, especially preparation for employment for challenging young people. They have provided a suite of activities for EL3 and L1 based on the theme of a leisure centre.
Use it!
Use the thematic idea to plan your own functional skills activities. Acorn asked their learners for topics. Why not consult yours?
Use the worksheets for initial teaching to build confidence as learners start to make choices about how to apply the skills they are developing.
Bedford Training Group is a leading provider of work-based learning in the Midlands, specialising in engineering training but also offering administration, motor vehicle, warehousing, construction and management training. They have built a programme comprising schemes of work, tracking and tips for tutors which bridges their SfL and key skills programmes to functional skills.
Use it!
Use the schemes and the tracking as good examples of coverage of functional skills in context.
Use the tips for tutors to build capacity in your centre.
Beneast Training Ltd is a training organisation working with local businesses in the north-west to help them recruit, train and develop their staff. They are delivering functional skills to Foundation Learners embedded functional skills application and practice into a music enrichment activity.
Use it!
Use the enrichment idea to meet the needs and interests of your learners. Where can they practise their skills?
Blackpool and the Fylde College is a large FE college in the north-west which has delivered the Key Skills CPD module for a number of years.
Blackpool and the Fylde College has adapted Warwick University’s Key Skills CPD module 1 for use in building functional skills capacity and expertise.
Use it!
Use it to consider your own CPD needs. Can you build your own module?
The consortium started an authority-wide network to share ideas and resources to support functional skills delivery. Here are some of the resources they produced and shared on their Moodle platform, including a suite of construction activities and a video on skills and creativity in the performing and creative arts.
Use it!
Use the resources as examples of embedded learning.
Use the local authority sharing and reviewing model to coordinate resource building in your own region and LA.
Bournville College is a large general further education college in south-west Birmingham. They have produced a set of both paper and web-based learning resources around a mobile phone theme, in order to address functional skills in English and maths at L1 and L2. The resources are project based and promote group work, collaboration, problem solving, and transfer of skills to other areas of a learner’s studies, work and leisure.
Use it!
Use this project as a starting point for similar projects to help your learners develop functionality.
Brent Adult and Community Education Service provides learning opportunities for local residents and the adjoining boroughs. Brent ACLs (Brent, Hammersmith & Fulham and Hounslow) have developed a plan for delivering functional skills within Foundation Learning to their adult learners.
Use it!
Use the handbook to help your staff become confident deliverers of functional skills.
Use the Scheme of Work to show how you can embed functional skills into your own programmes. Use the resources or adapt them for your own themes and learners.
Note how the collaboration of adult providers enriches all three authorities.
Bridgwater College is a Beacon college, located in the heart of Somerset, which draws students from the local area, across the UK and internationally. The college, in collaboration with a partner school, devised realistic and engaging activities to develop learners’ skills at levels 1 and 2. They used hand-held recording devices to help learners recognise and reflect on their skills and how they might improve them.
Use it!
Use the technique to stimulate interest in speaking and listening for your learners.
Use the themes and activities as starters to help you develop your own functional English materials.
Broadland Council Training Services is a specialist training provider in Norwich, working in three key areas of provision: Apprenticeships, business training and Foundation Learning programmes. Skills for Life and key skills specialists worked together to produce functional skills projects across a range of sectors (hair and beauty, equine, customer service, administration, sport, music technology and art and design). The projects were designed to get learners to develop their thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as giving them the opportunity to apply and practise English, mathematics and ICT in a vocational context. Accompanying the projects are lesson plans (mapped to functional skills, the Every Child Matters agenda and Common Inspection Framework
Use it!
Use these resources to help your learners tackle independent project work - in any context.
Bromley College and Orpington College worked together to develop a tool for the initial assessment of the writing component of functional English. The tool comprises the assessment and a clear guide to marking, levelling for all levels of functional English and moving on.
Use it!
Use the tool to assess writing and decision making in the application of English skills.
Use it to help you design your own initial assessment tools by using this approach with your own stimulus materials.
Castle College Nottingham offers a comprehensive range of further and higher education programmes and training for business and industry. The college has built a good reputation for partnership working (within the public and private sector) and inclusivity. The ‘Learners Guidebook for the Diploma Project with Functional Skills’ was developed for five lines of learning in the level 2/3 Diploma: Society, Health and Development, Business Administration, Retail Business, Creative and Media, and Hair and Beauty. Each booklet offers tips, guides and kinaesthetic activities to support learners in developing extended Diploma projects and the functional skills needed to achieve success.
Use it!
Use these guides to help focus your functional skills induction.
Use these guides to show how to embed functional skills into Diploma lines.
Planning and QA of functional skills
Three Cornish consortia - South Restormel, Atlantic and North Cornwall - worked together on developing a functional skills policy and quality assurance system to ensure consistent provision of functional skills across their consortia. Learning SW has provided a thorough and considered start-up kit for initiating up a successful functional skills programme with comprehensive coverage and robust quality and review mechanisms.
Use it!
Use the start-up kit to ensure your programme has considered all points and gets underway with an eye on quality.
If your programme is being delivered, use this approach as a comparison to see where you may wish to implement improvements to your own model.
Collaborative working
Learning South West, the south-west regional CETT, worked with three consortia in the region - Exeter4Learning, the North Wiltshire Federation and Taunton Deane - to produce their resources. The Ofsted thematic review challenged all consortia to deliver functional skills as part of a holistic Diploma delivery, ensuring that skills underpin and are evident in principal learning. This requires a collaborative approach, where each contributor shares consciously (and in a planned way) in the whole. Learning South West has met this challenge with an approach to collaborative working.
Use it!
Use the collaborative working materials to ensure that your consortium addresses the Ofsted thematic review's findings and provides your learners with a holistic programme where functional skills are used to support and progress Diploma learning.
Use these materials to encourage improvements to collaborative working in planning, delivering and improving all programmes.
Lewisham College is a large vocational college located in south-east London. The college has produced some lively teaching materials to address challenging areas of the functional skills English and maths regulatory criteria.
Use it!
Use them to stimulate your learners.
Use the approach to producing active learning materials to start producing resources of your own designed for your own needs and learners.
Chelmsford College is part of the Chelmsford and Maldon APG consortium, and is an FE college offering a wide range of academic, professional and vocational disciplines. The Area Planning Group for mid-Essex and Chelmsford College have produced two strands of functional skills materials:
- a comprehensive set of resources and schemes for Diploma learners in the Creative and Media line;
- resources for delivering functional skills in Foundation Learning.
Use it!
Use the schemes and Diploma resources as starting points for your own consortium work in developing a holistic programme.
Use the learner feedback/review forms as an example of one good way to ensure learners become skills-aware.
Use the Foundation Learning materials as an example of how functional skills could contribute to a complete Foundation Learning plan and support learner achievement.
Milton Keynes College is one of the fastest growing in the UK, with over 33,500 enrolments. The college has produced some holistic initial assessment materials that give learners an opportunity to learn about their strengths and weaknesses in all three functional skills and also their independence and task-solving abilities.
Use it!
Use these materials as printed if you are working with adult or vocational learners. The scenarios can be easily adapted for other users. Map the results from the tracking sheet onto an ILP to give learners a smooth transition into effective building of functionality.
National Star College is a specialist college working with learners aged 16-24 who have physical disabilities and associated learning difficulties. The college has developed guidance and information sheets supporting learners with speech difficulties or those who use augmentative assisted communication and also covering how to support learners, supported by video clips. They have also developed an entry-level assessment tool for speaking, listening and communication which can be used for self assessment and peer-to-peer assessment, as well as by tutors, and further resources on body language and social skills for entry level learners.
Use it!
Benefit from these skills specialists by using their materials and approach to support your learners who experience speaking and listening challenges.
Use their guidance to support any and all learners to develop their entry level speaking and listening skills further and build their confidence.
New College is one of the leading colleges of further and higher education in the north-east and one of the top 10% of colleges nationally, with strong vocational and adult programmes. Its offshoot Durham Solutions provides training to local employers. New College has developed an initial assessment screen to help learners discover their problem-solving strengths and weaknesses and start to build further functionality. The screen is generic and does not rely on any one of the three functional skills but, rather, on a functional approach.
Use it!
Use this screen to introduce problem-solving skills and their importance to your learners.
Use it to help both staff and learners see how problem solving lies at the core of the functional approach.
Use it to stimulate problem-solving screens, materials and lessons of your own.
The Northeast Adult Learning Service Peer Review Group is an ongoing project of five local authorities (Durham, Darlington, Hartlepool, North Tyneside and Redcar and Cleveland) which has produced a start-up pack for anyone delivering adult and continuing education. They started by reviewing a successful pilot, the Hartlepool model, and each member adapted this model for their own learners and contexts, noting benefits and issues. They trained staff together and produced a handbook which can support their staff in building capacity.
Use it!
Use the handbook to help train your staff and build functional skills teaching capacity.
Use the flowcharts with benefits and issues to decide which approach to take in implementing functional skills or how to improve your programme.
Use the flowchart method to highlight strengths and weaknesses in your own programme.
South West Durham Training has embedded functional skills practice and application in its Apprenticeships. After initial screening, planning and tuition by skills specialists, apprentice candidates use their skills to underpin work in their vocational areas.
Use it!
Use the approach to compare with your system; do you keep the learner focus as well?
Use this Scheme of work to help you review your own vocational teaching. Where can you support learners in consolidating skills and becoming more functional? Note how the final units go beyond English, maths and ICT to look at the larger problem solving approach.
Use the observation sheet to see how functional skills form part of every teaching experience.
South Nottingham College offers a comprehensive range of further and higher education courses and training opportunities for business and industry. The college has developed a set of English, maths and ICT learning and assessment resources using a 'Health Earth' theme, suited to all learners.
Use it!
These materials make interesting teaching and learning materials in a real-life context. Learners develop a skill and can apply it in a supported context.
Sussex Downs College is one of the biggest further education colleges in the country. A member of the influential 157 Group, it has the opportunity to share good practice with other colleges and schools and work directly with other providers who would benefit from its support. This project involved the development of a thorough plan and mapping for embedding both functional skills and a functional approach in the Diploma, using Society, Health and Development as an example.
Use it!
Use the two schematics as a trigger for decisions about planning to incorporate functional skills into your own programming.
Use the SHD materials to inspire your own embedding of functional skills into programmes.
Use the mapping to show how to achieve coverage.
Voyage Health Care is an employer in the social care sector who specialise in providing transport for service users. Voyage has produced SAFED: a scheme of work which embeds functional skills in driving training.
Use it!
Use these materials to show how to embed functional skills into your vocational teaching. Look at how functional skills are taught and then consider how learners will become more proficient in using their skills by applying them.
Worcester Sixth Form College is an open access college which provides a wide range of courses from level 2 vocational to over 42 AS and A level subjects. The college has produced a set of speaking and listening resources around a driving theme, in order to address functional skills in English at L1 and L2. The resources promote group work, collaboration and problem solving, as speaking and listening is placed at the heart of every learning activity
Use it!
Use these materials to inspire your own approach to speaking and listening, starting from learner’s needs and interests and a real-life context.