Functional Skills Round Up

I recently attended a course at the Centre for Staff Development in Brentfield Road. It is always stimulating to get out and meet teachers from schools and other Colleges. This was no exception.
I thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse into the very near future.
What is new about Functional Skills? How to are they different from Key Skills? What will be the impact for our students and us as teachers?
Their aim is to be more integrated, even than Key Skills. As you may guess from the name "Functional" the emphasis is on skills that all of us need or will need to be effective and make progress in work. In Key Skills everything had to be "fit for purpose" - this fitness is now tightened up to imply a little more. The buzz words now are no longer "underpinning Skills" - instead students are going to "build", "apply" and "master." Mastery means that the student can apply the skill in an appropriate setting without the need for futher instruction.
Each Functional Skill is to be a free standing qualification: English, Mathematics and ICT. There will be exams as well as Folders, and the exams will not rely on mulitiple choice.
As The Functional Skills take hold in the next couple of years, they will be found across the entire curriculum. For example a student doing GCSE English in 2011/12 will be expected to Functional Skills as part of their GCSE. How awarding bodies and Centres will deal with this issue remains to be seen.
To sum up, Functional Skills aim to create independent learners. An independent learner can be defined as someone who has the ability to:

• integrate prior and new knowledge
• acquire and use a range of learning skills
• make appropriate choices about learning strategies
• cope creatively with the unfamiliar and unexpected
• solve problems individually and in groups
• learn from their successes and failures
• accept that learning involves uncertainty and difficulty

By applying the above criteria to the lessons we plan and the support that we give, from now, we will be effectively predicting the onset of Functional Skills.