Once again, many thousands of students have aimed for minimum grade 4 GCSE passes in maths and English that will allow them to move ahead in their chosen courses and careers. Last week’s resit pass rates based on teacher assessments have improved on 2020 results by 2.8% for English and almost 6% for maths for students aged 17 and over, according to Joint Council for Qualifications figures.
But behind all these statistics is another story. From the scores of interviews with FE lecturers carried by this website, few jobs seem to have engendered more joy and job satisfaction than among those teaching students to retake GCSE maths and English and/or learn functional skills. The overriding message is just try it.
Maths specialist Lucy Godwin spent 12 years as a primary school teacher and latterly deputy head, but the strain of often working very long hours took its toll and she yearned to get back to ‘chalk-face’ teaching. A vacancy in GCSE/functional skills came up at Southampton City College and, although she felt her primary school background would not equip her to teach much older students, she still applied and could not have been more wrong.
“I was expecting to teach at secondary level but I quickly realised my students had basically not learnt anything at school since year 5. Some had suffered horrific secondary school experiences - many were put in rooms on their own with workbooks do do so that they didn’t kick off in class. My primary experience has proved perfect. At college I’ve never had to teach anything more technical than what I taught years 5 and 6.”
She says it’s been heart-breaking to learn what students have been through. “‘My teachers never liked me’ is a common response, so in my teaching I aim to combat the high degree of negativity students bring with them when they start at college. Many learners respond well to the supportive ‘back-rubbing’ style of teaching that primary schools are expert at; they are at the same level of academic maturity as 10- and 11-year-olds. You just have to get them excited about learning again.”
So how does she do that? “I’ve just needed to apply my teaching skills, such as behaviour management, in different ways. I always use humour to calm down situations and that works well. The challenge is trying to inspire students to attend - it’s their choice - so I make learning as engaging and fun as possible. We average [smaller class] sizes of around 15, which makes a huge difference.
“I introduce strategies that work with younger children so we do play a lot of games, such as card games and really physical activities - poles apart from the traditional worksheet style of education. I also run quizzes and create opportunities for students to work together. I keep it fun and interesting but am constantly aware of their mental health and self-confidence levels - if they don’t want a camera on when learning virtually, they can switch it off. It’s about letting them know they are valued at all times, even in a virtual world.”
Lucy focuses her lessons on everyday topics such as understanding interest rates online when applying for credit cards: “In my functional skills classes it’s about real-life learning.” While GCSE level requires some understanding of pure maths, she introduces a practical element wherever possible.
She’s realistic about student progress. “If you come in with a grade 2, there is a huge misconception that you will get to a grade 4 (pass) by year-end. Well, no! At secondary level students are expected to make two levels of progress across four years - not just in nine months - although we do aim to get them up one level in a year.”
So what splits students (school leavers, apprentices and adult learners) between doing functional skills and GCSEs? “If you get a grade 1 from school or before you receive your predicted grades, you automatically take functional skills; anyone with a grade 2 or 3 joins a GCSE retake group.”
Lucy clearly loves what she does, and makes a strong case to join her to teachers currently working in primary or secondary school, direct out of teacher training, teaching other subjects in college or even straight from industry.
“The job really makes you feel you’re having an impact on your students’ lives when, often after years of negative school experience, they suddenly ‘get it’ with you because you teach in a different way.”
As a specialist teacher, Lucy knows numerous strategies for teaching different aspects of maths and English - how to take struggling students back to basics before building on them. She says the real rewards come when your students start feeling pride in their learning, and you feel proud of them. “You can be the one person who changes their outlook and gets them through assessments or exams. That’s really positive … they may never have got through anything before.”
‘Miracles’ seem to happen constantly. A mature young student on a painting and decorating (P&D) course had real reading difficulties and yet proved to be a stand-out success. “He told me he was actually made to stand in the hallways at school. I set up some extra ad hoc one-to-one reading sessions with him and six months later he’d passed his level 1 functional skills in reading, writing and speaking and listening, which allowed him to progress to the next part of his P&D course and apply for an apprenticeship. He’d picked it up very quickly. For me that’s amazing when he could barely read before. This year he also took his maths GCSE.”
Work is also much more straightforward at college, says Lucy: four 90-minute sessions most days plus two hours’ preparation time across the week. Lucy does not need to catch up in her own time and marking work is much more pen-in-hand than going through, say, 130 pieces of work in one evening session. She’s said goodbye to often 70-hour working weeks at primary school. “Maths and English GCSE curriculums are quite prescriptive so I know exactly what and when I am teaching, meaning planning is not such a workload. Plus you teach the same lesson several times a week and do not have to deliver primary school lessons in umpteen different subjects.”
Lucy Godwin’s fondness for a vital, often life-changing area of learning is echoed by Emma Richer (My favourite lecturer, September 21, 2020), who until very recently spent six years as a GCSE maths teacher at City of Bristol College. Emma too felt she was not prepared for GCSE maths.
A trained primary school teacher, she had no background in maths teaching when she started teaching health and social care to childcare students at City of Bristol. Her manager asked her to teach maths to the students, and she initially said no. She had had to resit her own GCSE maths at college, not her strongest subject. But teach it, she did - and she shocked herself. “I absolutely loved it! I was just surprised how little maths these students knew. I really wanted to help them pass their maths to enable them to progress on their childcare course.”
Ironically, Emma was able to personally empathise with her students as she’d been through exactly what they were facing. She knew how tough it was to pass. “It was a huge learning curve to retrain for maths teaching - I took a subject knowledge enhancement course - but it’s been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in my life. Teaching maths is the best thing ever. I’d encourage anyone to try it. If you don’t teach maths and wonder what it’s like, give it a go!”
John Stancliffe (Day in the life, March 29) spent 12 years in the RAF before leaving to join City of Liverpool College to teach GCSE and functional skills. Unlike Emma, he’d gained maths and science A-levels and has always dabbled in maths out of interest. “Now,” he says, “it’s like passing on a hobby to my students!”
In functional maths, he goes back to absolute basics; he tells his students to forget everything that’s gone before and build on a new foundation. He covers the four main operations - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division - and then introduces topics such as knowing how to use money. “We’ve recently looked at navigating with a compass, learning about directions and reading scales of measurement such as temperatures and weights.”
“I build on my students’ state of mind. There’s much more ‘I can’t do maths’ negativity than I’d thought, so I try to get my students to believe in themselves.”
What’s so special about GCSEs for John? “ ‘Aha’ moments! It’s seeing students’ confused faces light up when you explain something another way and then they get it. And when the results come out, it’s fantastic when they come up to you saying they can’t believe they’ve passed.”
Yet another route into functional maths in FE is through teaching people in the prison system. Sian Roberts (Day in the life, February 3, 2020) started teaching at HMP Erlestoke, a category C prison in Wiltshire, in 2016, where she’s been employed by Milton Keynes College. This followed several years working in industry, gaining a biology degree in her 30s, and then spending 12 years as an English, maths and science tutor.
“I help learners identify the skills they have. I build up their self-esteem by raising their confidence, skills levels and knowledge so that they can join in a group in a teaching setting. So many think they can’t do anything but on a five-week course it’s amazing what can be achieved!”
One of the most satisfying functional skills areas for Sian is literacy. At one outreach learning group she ran, previously mainly illiterate prisoners spent several weeks rehearsing a shared reading. “They all stood up individually and read out their parts of the story a fellow inmate had written. I was so proud - it was a lovely moment. The power of learning to read is phenomenal, it’s life-changing.”
AoCJobs, part of the Association of Colleges, connects teachers and support staff with schools and colleges for online job opportunities.