This week I attended a curriculum support day organised by the Hampshire Information and Advisory Services. I was impressed by the venue, how knowledgeable and accommodating our course leader was and incidently, lunch was too shabby either.
A summary of the information presented; first an overview of Functional Skills and the emphasis on mastery as opposed to competency assessment. In other words, students must be able to show / demonstrate they can meet minimum standards rather than suppassing a benchmark score on a exam. Within 2010 as a key date for Functional Skills, there is a need to move towards a more mastery based ‘teaching styles’ for learners starting examined courses in 2008 (Yr9) . Of courses Functional Skills for Diplomas courses will impact on Hamble College in sooner, which left an important, as yet unanswered question, who is delivering functional skills within our local consortia?
Second, we were asked to reflect on the Conscious Competence Model which struck a cord, as I felt it had CPD potential for our College staff and reflected our learners approach to learning.
Finally we discussed the NEW programmes of study and the delivery models used in our schools; discrete, partially embedded, mostly embedded and fully embedded. I sincerely believe that our decision to try and innovative our curriculum delivery model to combine PSHE, L2L and ICT will benefit our students. It provides an immediate context for the students learning and the design process will of course encourage staff to collaborate and think creatively to ensure the full breadth of these curricular components.