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 ...

National curriculum exams should be scrapped in favour of new functional skills tests, a teachers' leader has said. Dr John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders ...

The functional skills teenagers in England will need to get a grade C in maths and English GCSEs have been published for consultation. The move is in response to employers' complaints that even ...

Under proposals, students would be required to take a separate exam in "functional" literacy and numeracy, including writing letters and working out a budget. They would have to pass the tests to get ...

Ministers were forced into a U-turn yesterday over plans to make teenagers demonstrate mastery of the three Rs to gain good GCSE grades in English and maths. Employers were promised in 2005 that ...

Head teachers want the national curriculum tests that 14-year-olds in England have to sit to be scrapped. The Association of School and College Leaders says young people will shortly have to take ...

To earn a C grade or above pupils will have to pass a new 'functional skills' test. They will have to show they can 'punctuate accurately using commas, apostrophes and inverted commas'. Currently, ...