October saw the end of Pearson’s Festival of Functionality, twenty-six hours of CPD aimed at supporting teachers and improving outcomes for learners. This content is now making its way onto our YouTube playlist, if you missed it live, you can access it now, at your leisure. Looking ahead to future activity, we will be starting our Virtual Sharing Hubs, an opportunity for teachers to get together and share their resources on Functional Skills maths and English. More to come on that soon. 

Delivering CPD is one of my favourite parts of my role in Pearson and I have a long history of doing this. As a younger teacher I was lucky to be given the opportunity to develop these skills. Working for International House in Bielsko-Biala, Poland, I attended weekly CPD sessions. Each week the senior teachers would deliver CPD that was relevant to what we would be doing that week, filled with practical tips while developing our pedagogical understanding. 

After a while I volunteered to deliver some of these sessions. As a new teacher, this was an important part of my development and an opportunity to get a deeper understanding of what I was delivering to my learners. I remember running sessions on using poetry and using readers (simplified versions of novels) and being able to give practical advice and tips. I also remember the sense of pride when my peers used my resources in their classrooms. This has continued throughout my career both in Work-Based learning and Further Education environments and now in my role at Pearson. 

With this in mind, I feel it is important for centres to give their staff the opportunity to share their expertise on a regular basis. At a recent CPD event at Capital City College Group guest speakers and staff delivered CPD sessions and this was great to see staff being given this opportunity and I feel this should happen more. Not just managers and Advanced Practitioners but everyday teachers too, they have so much to offer, the insight and experiences they can share can provide so much value for others, in their day-to-day teaching. 

Making the most of Pearson delivery tools for CPD 

One way to start this is to start using the tools Pearson offers effectively. ResultsPlus is one of these tools. Not only does it show a breakdown of marks for individual learners (which is invaluable for resits and progression) it also shows how a cohort has performed over a month. This cohort analysis is the perfect starting point for a CPD plan. 

Below is a sample cohort analysis for Functional Skills Level 2 reading. It covers one month of assessments.

Interpreting this we can see that they may be issues with how the learners are being taught implied and inferred meaning in texts and using a range of reference materials to find the meanings of words.  

A positive CPD session here would be to look at how those questions are asked in the assessments (ExamWizard is great for this) and for teachers to discuss and share their ideas for delivering this to learners. A plan for effective delivery can then come out of this. Giving teachers ownership of this makes it more likely that the plans will be implemented. A follow up CPD session can then be arranged to discuss any changes made to delivery and feedback on how the learners performed in subsequent assessments. 

Looking at a similar approach for Functional Skills maths, I picked out the following areas of concern on a ResultsPlus Functional Skills Level 1 maths cohort analysis for a centre. I picked out the areas with the most marks available where the success was less than 60%. 

• Find mean of a set of quantities 54% 
• Represent discrete data in diagrams and charts 37% 
• Work with direct proportion 52% 
• Recognise and use positive and negative numbers 36% 
• Calculate simple interest in multiples of 5% on amounts of money 57% 

Within a centre there would be many methods of delivering these coverage and range points and this can be tapped into. As an example, I attended a session recently on different ways of doing the basics of maths (four rules etc.) in that session I learnt a new way of adding and subtracting fractions and I have taught maths for 15 years (using a fraction frame, in case you are wondering). If that can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. 

One final thing to use is the Examiner Reports that we publish. These give you a good understanding of the errors that learners make in their Level 1 and 2 assessments. If you can understand the mistakes, you can help rectify them. 

Chris Briggs - Product Manager Post 16 English, Maths and Digital Skills