On September 20th an inspiring and educational Functional Skills workshop took place. The day was well structured and full of ideas, tricks and treats to support the delivery of English Functional Skills. The day’s workshop was delivered by Martin Rolfe.
Martin has over 30 years’ experience of working within the learning and skills sector, predominantly in vocational areas and, more recently Functional Skills. From 2007 to 2011, Martin worked as a National Development Adviser for the Functional Skills Support Programme (FSSP) and then the Workforce Support (Diplomas) with LSN.
Among other roles Martin has worked as a functional skills chief/senior examiner and test writer for a number of awarding bodies as well as being a Subject Expert with Ofqual for Functional English, Adult Literacy, ESOL and Construction. Most recently he was involved in writing part of the Exemplar Curriculum for the reformed Functional English Subject Content for Pye Tait/Department for Education (DfE).
Martin is passionate about the delivery of functional skills and was extremely supportive during the delivery of the workshop. One delegate commented: “A very good session, a good blend of everything. Martin was very knowledgeable and I gained a lot of useful tips.”
During the training he highlighted that the government is now carrying out a consultation for functional skills to improve their relevance and content for the new standards that are due to be launched in 2019. It is important that we have our say to ensure that these new qualifications are what we need to accompany our vocational qualifications.
The deadline for submission to the consultation is the 7th November 2017.
Please click on the following link and give your views, it does not matter which awarding organisation that you deliver functional skills with: https://consult.education.gov.uk/adult-english-and-maths/reformed-functional-skills-maths-and-english-subje/
Find out more about the Functional Skills Qualifications that we offer.
