The guidelines

Purpose

The guidelines are designed for managers and practitioners across the FE sector who wish to embed the functional skills of literacy, numeracy, language and ICT into the vocational curriculum.

Although the guidelines focus on embedding into vocational programmes, they are equally applicable at all levels of the academic curriculum.

Aims

The guidelines aim to provide clear, practical guidance on how to set up and run embedded programmes. They promote the process as a strategic route to learners’ achievement and encourage a whole-organisation, strategic approach to embedding.

They are divided into four main phases of activity:

How to use the guidelines

For each phase, specific actions are identified. These are intended to provide practical support for those wishing to embed functional skills into the vocational curriculum.

The phases are partly chronological – for instance the planning stage comes first (phases 1 and 2), followed by actual programme delivery (phase 3).

The phases may also be cyclical - for instance evaluation (phase 4) of one year’s programme may form part of the planning (phases 1 and 2) of the next year’s programme.

Also, the process of quality improvement is continuous, forming a part of all four phases of activity.