Functional skills (L4)
Functional skills include
- Language
- Literacy
- Numeracy
- ICT
The idea of functional skills is to ensure that learners are able to develop their basic skills which will enable individuals better integration in society promoting enhanced opportunities for employment.
Functional skills can be taught as individual courses or as part of another course (embedded). Today all apprenticeship programmes include a requirement for all learners to achieve at least a level one in all functional skills.
As a teacher you are required to have at least a level 2 in your functional skill ability. This will be discussed more in the minimum core section.
In your course you can provide opportunities to support functional skills. This process is called embedding. This is when you are teaching two sets of skills. You take one course and include the functional skills element. This is another reason to ensure you have the required level of Maths, English and ICT
Even if you are teaching a functional skills class for example ICT you can still embed another functional skill such as maths. Below are some examples.
| COURSE | FUNCTIONAL SKILLS OPPORTUNITY |
| Business skills |
|
| Employment skills |
|
| Cookery |
|
Table 1: Functional skills