Your comments by email to ray.auvray@prospects.co.uk would be very . . . → Read More: FEdS Newsletter]]> There is important news in our FEdS April newsletter published today about the future of our network. We would value your views on the proposals outlined in the newsletter by Ray Auvray, Executive Chairman of Prospects – of which FEdS is a part.

Your comments by email to ray.auvray@prospects.co.uk would be very welcome.

The purpose of the workshop is to give employers full details . . . → Read More: WorldSkills – Business to Business Challenge Workshop – MACH 2012]]> Semta: the Sector Skills Council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies is currently working with the WorldSkills team to invite employers to a Business to Business Challenge workshop on the 20^th April 2012 which will take place at the MACH Show, NEC, Birmingham. 

The purpose of the workshop is to give employers full details about the Business to Business Challenge which will take place shortly after the MACH Show.  The Business to Business Challenge will allow competitors/teams to compete against each other in an elimination competition to find the Team UK competitors for WorldSkills Leipzig 2013.

If you have the skills and training within your organisation to produce one of the competitors or teams for WorldSkills Team UK 2013 in the following skill areas Semta want to hear from you;

·         Manufacturing Team Challenge (Team of 3)

·         Sheet MetalWork

·         Construction MetalWork

·         Polymechanics

To attend the workshop, please contact Joanne O’Brien, UK Science Engineering & Skills Competition Coordinator on 07595 201588 or e-mail me at jobrien@semta.org.uk below confirming in which skill you would like to enter a team/competitor.

Members will recall that the FEdS pre-Christmas seminar was given by David Cragg, Deputy Chairman of WorldSkills London 2011 where he espoused the successes of that event which saw over 200,000 visitors and participants complete.  The UK came fifth overall from the 51 countries competing.  The 2012 UK event, The Skills Show will take place at the NEC Birmingham from 15-17 November 2012. 

Information on future WorldSkills events can be found at:

WorldSkills Leipzig 2013

http://www.worldskillsleipzig2013.com/

WorldSkills UK

http://worldskillsuk.apprenticeships.org.uk/

The Minister for Youth Employment, Angela Constance, welcomed the appointment, saying: “The Scottish Government has worked closely with the UKCES since its inception, . . . → Read More: Paul McKelvie OBE]]> Paul McKelvie OBE has appointed Scotland Commissioner to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES). He succeeds Willy Roe OBE whose tenure as Scotland Commissioner ended on 31 March 2012.

The Minister for Youth Employment, Angela Constance, welcomed the appointment, saying: “The Scottish Government has worked closely with the UKCES since its inception, and  our dealings with them have been constructive across a range of practical issues relating to skills provision in Scotland. As Scotland Commissioner, I look forward to Paul continuing to develop this productive relationship. He will have a key role to play in articulating the issues and policies operating in Scotland within the work of the UKCES.”

For full details and press release

Any change would apply to English exam boards, whose papers are also sat by pupils in Wales and Northern Ireland. The new A-levels could be taught from . . . → Read More: Universities to “drive” A-level system]]> Education secretary Michael Gove has asked the top universities to set A-level exams because of concern that the current exams fail to properly prepare students for university.

Any change would apply to English exam boards, whose papers are also sat by pupils in Wales and Northern Ireland. The new A-levels could be taught from as soon as 2014.

Gove has instructed the exam boards and ministers to “take a step back” from dictating the content of A-levels and hand over the power to academics. At present, the Department for Education sets out the structure and core knowledge A-level students need to know, and exam boards devise the questions and coursework.

Gove has written to the qualifications watchdog, Ofqual, asking for universities to be allowed to “drive the system”.

The 24 most academically competitive universities in the UK, known as the Russell Group, will be allowed to set questions and the content of the syllabus. Schools will be advised to put their pupils in for only those A-levels that have been approved by the universities.

The move coincides with research published today revealing that many universities are being forced to provide booster lessons in the three Rs for first-year undergraduates because school leavers are so badly prepared for degree courses.

A study by Cambridge Assessment (a FEdS member) reported that many teenagers struggled to structure an essay, use correct spelling, punctuation and grammar and carry out independent research after being “spoon-fed” through A-levels.  FEdS will be running a seminar on June 28 with Paul Steer of OCR about the future of the A-level. More details will be sent to members shortly

When A-levels were introduced in the early 1950s, they were set by universities and seen as rigorous preparation for degree courses.

Gove’s move is likely to lead to fewer students achieving top grades, the abolition of modules and retakes – other than in exceptional circumstances – and longer essay questions in exams.

Students would sit the exams two years later. Initially, the changes would affect English, maths and science A-levels in England, but would soon be rolled out to all subjects and across the UK.

Gove said Ofqual must ensure university ownership of the exams was “real and committed, not a tick-box exercise”.

Cambridge Assessment’s 18 month long Higher Education (HE) engagement research programme also discovered that universities want less ‘teaching to the test’ and for A Levels to be reformed they have to be:

•              Less predictable;

•              Have more essay/open-ended style questions;

•              Limit the number of resits.

The initial research findings support the programme of its UK exam board OCR, which is already working with nearly 150 academics from HE and learned societies in nine subject areas, to investigate how the exam board can help students succeed in a smoother transition from sixth form study to university education.

Dr Irenka Suto, Senior Research Officer at Cambridge Assessment, said: “We hope that our systematic approach to data collection and analysis will give credibility to the evidence used to develop the next generation of A Levels”.

Mark Dawe, Chief Executive of OCR, said: “Our parent organisation’s research, together with our own subject-based consultative forums, has provided us with a firm evidence base to design the next generation of A Levels to the standards expected by HE.”

For further details regarding Cambridge Assessment’s HE engagement work including its  ‘A better approach to Higher Education/exam board interaction for Post-16 qualifications’ policy paper and OCR’s consultative forums Viewpoint   

Newspaper coverage:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/9182175/University-dons-take-charge-in-exams-shake-up.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17588292

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/apr/02/michael-gove-universities-a-level-examinations?newsfeed=true

Nearly 17 million people in . . . → Read More: Wendy Jones blog for FEdS – National Numeracy]]> You may have caught the news earlier this month of the launch of a new charity, National Numeracy, which aims to improve the state of numeracy in the UK. If so, you were – I hope – somewhat taken aback by the grim statistics that accompanied the story.

Nearly 17 million people in England – almost half the working-age population – have the numeracy skills expected of children at primary school (i.e. below Level 1). What’s more, half of those have the skills of a nine-year-old or younger (below Entry Level 3). That means they may not be able to check pay and deductions on a wage slip, understand bus timetables or pay household bills.

In fact, the figures weren’t new. They first emerged, rather quietly, in a BIS report in December, in the results of the first Skills for Life survey since 2003. Publication of the survey headlines attracted relatively little attention. Most of the media either didn’t spot the figures or decided they were uninteresting.

But what the figures showed was not only that the numeracy position was bad, but that it had got worse in the eight years since the last SfL survey and that the gap between numeracy and literacy was growing. Those with Level 2 or above (equivalent to GCSE A*-C) was up from 44% to 57% in literacy, but down from 26% to 22% in numeracy.

By and large the response to the story was phenomenal. Getting coverage on the Today programme, Sky News, the World Service, nearly all the papers – and even hearing the matter raised on Any Questions – suggested that we were pushing at an open door, although one radio producer did actually ask me while deciding whether or not to cover the story, is maths that important?  Doubtless, he was thinking back to his own experience of blackboard formulae and querying the relevance of those to real life.  

Well, yes, it is important, and I hardly need say that to readers of this site. It matters because – to state the obvious – maths is all around us in the way we interact with the world and with each other. If your maths is poor, you’re not going to be on top of your own personal finances – energy tariffs and APR will remain a mystery, ‘cheap’ credit offers will be lying in wait to trap you. You’re going to struggle to help your children with maths schoolwork, and you’re not going to get a better – or maybe any – job.

It will be obvious to FEdS members how much numeracy matters too to the economy. KPMG estimated the annual cost to the UK of poor numeracy at £2.4 billion. England, Wales and Northern Ireland have fewer young people continuing maths beyond 16 than almost all other developed countries. (Scotland does a little better, probably because of a broader curriculum in later secondary.) And of course this affects the shortfall in the numbers going into science, engineering and technology subjects at university – and into teaching. Only last week it was reported that half of the maths teacher training places for September are unfilled.

Underpinning all of these manifestations of the numeracy problem is what we see as a peculiarly British trait: negative attitudes which allow people across the social spectrum to brag that they’re ‘no good at maths’.

None of this is a new story and perhaps the fact that it is not a new story is the story. We’ve known for decades that the UK has this problem but, in spite of periodic hand-wringing, things have barely shifted.

At National Numeracy, the view is that no-one – child or adult – should be written off as being no good at maths. Everyone can learn to get better at it. On that basis, we are setting out to bang the drum loudly in order to change attitudes. In terms of practical projects, we will also collaborate with others to spread the word on what does work and identify gaps where new thinking is needed.

Others have tried some of this before, but never as single-mindedly as National Numeracy aims to. For a long time, numeracy has sat within the shadow of literacy: the debate about basic skills nearly always centred on reading and writing. The recent improvement in literacy is therefore to be welcomed – it shows what you can do if public attention and effort are thrown at a problem. The time has now arrived for a concerted effort to do the same for numeracy.

FEdS associate Wendy Jones is a trustee of National Numeracy and formerly BBC education correspondent and head of BBC education policy.