We’ve improved our Functional Skills qualifications

Following your valuable feedback and a thorough review of our English and maths qualifications, we’ve made improvements to our assessments, resources and practice papers.

We're excited to announce that our new papers will be available to sit from Friday 17 October 2025. More details can be found on our Key Dates Information webpage.

The sample assessment materials for each level can be accessed on the individual qualification webpages under ‘Assessment Materials’.

We’ve focused on three key areas:

Accessibility – we’ve made our assessments more accessible for learners to complete and demonstrate their knowledge.

Clarity – we’ve improved our approach to make assessments clearer for learners:

• our maths assessments now require less reading, and we’ve removed the context from underpinning skills questions
• our English Reading assessments now assess more of the main points of a text, with more variety in the question types. At Level 1, we’ve made big changes to the way we assess learners’ comparison skills, and at Level 2, to the way we assess comparison and analysis skills
• our English Writing assessments at Entry Level now include our new approach to the spelling test. There are also new discrete punctuation tasks. At Level 1 and 2, learners will have longer to complete the assessments
• we have new mark schemes that will support learning and teaching activities.

Support – we’ll have a range of new materials and support available:

• our Provider Development team will offer new sessions and training for delivery staff
• we have new sample assessment materials and a practice paper at each level, with more to come soon
• our External Quality Assurance team is here to support with any queries you may have

We are launching new learning and teaching resources to support the delivery of the improved qualifications.

• The resources will cover all levels, and each will feature a detailed scheme of work covering all 55 guided learning hours of the curriculum.
• Comprehensive PowerPoint documents will be available to allow you to run 2-hour sessions with class activities and embedded videos, some with AI-powered presenters.
• Entry Level learners will have access to workbooks supporting learning for sessions, and new end-of-topic project workbooks to consolidate learning.
• At Levels 1 and 2, comprehensive learner workbooks cover the whole curriculum.
• In order to differentiate between new and old design sample assessments in SecureClient, we have added a suffix called 'New Design' which will be in the design of the new assessment papers.