Nursery World - Functional skills tests are a joke!

As students receive their GCSE results, Ross Midgley, managing director of PBD Early Years Training, argues that functional skills testing is not rigorous enough to ensure good standards.

My training company, PBD, is celebrating exceptional GCSE results this week. Every one of our students studying English Language passed with grades from A* to B. In maths, 57 per cent achieved C or above.

This result is remarkable, given that all these students had failed to achieve a C at school. Nationally, just 7 per cent of students in this group achieve a C when re-sitting, whereas PBD’s results mirrored the 67 per cent achieved by those sitting for the first time.

It’s early days and numbers are still small, but these results back up our judgement that online courses with tutor support are the way forward for working adults. PBD students study in private and at their own pace, without fear of humiliation in a classroom, and can ask their personal tutor for help through a webinar or a 1:1 Skype tutorial.

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