Sarah-Jayne

 

We use Edexcel for our L1 & 2 Functional Skills.  They treat the paper based exams as GQs and the admin is very straight forwards and works well.  The papers arrive in time, the marks return as promised, no real issues in fact.  The ICT tests are simple to administer and apart from trying to find sufficient computers again no problems. 

 

We have started trialing the Onscreen tests and these have worked well so far with only two failures due to minor computer issues.  The Onscreen tests are administered as vocational courses inline with BTEC and hence are different to the paper based ones, but there are no major issues there.  There are a couple of oddities in the booking process that are in common with the C&G GOLA system that current uses the same infrastructure, which as we are experienced GOLA users came as no surprise.  It is too early yet to know how the results will go (they take four weeks and the first test was this Monday!) but the feedback from the students, particularly the lads, is very positive.

 

I am currently apprehensive about the move to BTL for the C&G GOLA tests including their Functional Skills as we still have issues regarding BTL for the AAT exams, and hence although C&G are promising immediate results for their Onscreen FS next year I would be apprehensive in switching to them.  I am not sure that I agree about the comment of losing connection automatically being a problem with BTL as there are ways to mitigate this.

 

All of the above comments are based from an Admin perspective - I have insufficient knowledge to comment on the suitability of the content of the courses.

 

Regards

 

Duncan