This guidance on the Excellence Gateway website provides pointers to enable you to develop your own functional skills initial assessment tool.
Key points
Some key take aways from the guidance are:
- You can use existing nationally developed and commercially developed adult literacy and numeracy initial assessment tools to assess basic English and maths skills. These meet at least part of the need for a test-based assessment of skills by indicating broad learner strengths and gaps in underpinning knowledge and skills, but are insufficient on their own, as they do not assess functionality.
- The test-based approach could be supplemented by setting brief integrated tasks where learners are required to apply English and mathematics skills to solving a problem. These could be individual or group tasks.
- Task-based or practical assessments should be relevant to the learner’s proposed programme of study.
- You can develop appropriate initial assessment tasks based on your knowledge of the requirements of particular programmes of learning
To read more and to view some example functional tasks, visit the Excellence Gateway website.
