The Secret Behind TQUK’s Learner-Friendly Functional Skills Assessments
Preparing for an assessment takes a lot of time, dedication and hard work.
Now, imagine the deflation a learner experiences if they’re faced with vague questions, confusing instructions and poorly selected images.
No one should be kept up at night wondering if Gregg put 10 watermelons in his shopping cart instead of 13 pineapples. Or if Sarah was travelling at 20 miles an hour instead of 15.
At TQUK, we understand the importance of clarity. The qualifications we create play significant roles in learners’ lives, and it’s only fair that they’re given clear and understandable papers that fairly assess their knowledge without any risk of them misunderstanding a question.
How do we do this? Let’s speak with the experts themselves, the people who protect the papers like dragons guarding treasure, ensuring the contents are fit and ready to go out into the world.
What makes a great Functional Skills paper?
For Aaron O’Neill, TQUK’s Assessment Developer (and professional language whizz), it’s all about making the content understandable to anyone.
“Accessibility should be considered throughout the design process of every Functional Skills paper,” Aaron explains. “It’s vital to make sure that papers don’t create an unfair advantage or disadvantage for anyone.
“Learners from all backgrounds should be able to access these papers – we think of it as ‘any age, any stage’. A good Functional Skills paper should always be valid, reliable and fit for purpose.”
Janet Crook, TQUK’s Assessment Developer Lead (and Queen of all things detail), adds that our “questions are free of bias and any deemed inaccessible undergo a rewrite or are removed from the paper entirely.”
Assessment fit for the workplace
Vocational Technical Qualifications (VTQs) are all about helping learners prepare for the working world, and Functional Skills are no different. That’s why we approach our Functional Skills papers with the workplace in mind.
“A good Functional Skills paper should allow learners to successfully apply their knowledge to familiar contexts and everyday-life scenarios,” Aaron says. “This means that every paper created should be carefully designed to help learners develop knowledge and skills that they can confidently apply to their working life.”
That’s not just about how the papers are presented, but also the language being used. Janet explains how learners are “at the heart of the creation process” and the Functional Skills Team “complete rigorous reviews of assessment materials to ensure language used is concise, easy to understand and not misleading or intentionally designed to deceive or mislead.”
According to Aaron, this is accomplished by:
avoiding overly complicated sentence structures
removing words or phrases which are likely unfamiliar or deemed problematic
ensuring that papers are consistent in format and structure but are not predictable
using a wide range of contexts and scenarios throughout our production process.
And what about those grainy, squint-worthy pictures that haunt our dreams? You’ll be relieved to hear from Janet that, “the same approach is applied to the use of images in papers as we want to remove any possible distraction caused by unnecessary photos or visuals.”
Bringing a fresh approach
Whilst accessible and clear papers are a huge win, we also have a secret weapon that blows our Functional Skills out of the park: we’re relatively new to the Functional Skills scene.
This means we’ve had the opportunity to observe what does and doesn't work, hear what our customers are looking for, and develop a unique assessment experience that reflects the needs of the modern-day job market.
But it doesn’t end there. As Janet explains, our Assessment Development Team continuously “keep track of current trends and ensure these familiar themes and scenarios are reflected across our assessments”.
This approach has “allowed learners to be more engaged with our papers and is further highlighted by the high success rates across both our Functional Skills Maths and English qualifications.”
And that’s it right there. The main goal we’re all here for: “high success rates.” It’s what our work is all about – empowering our learners to confidently demonstrate their Functional Skills knowledge to the best of their ability. Or, as Aaron nicely puts it, “we are all in the business of making sure learners achieve as much as they possibly can.”
By prioritising accessibility, clarity and relevance through a modern approach, we’ve created an exam experience that encourages learners to shine without second-guessing their strengths.
With the insights from experts like Aaron and Janet, it’s clear that we don’t just create assessments - we create opportunities for learners to thrive.