City & Guilds has joined forces with MyKindaCrowd, a social enterprise with a mission to connect young people to the world-of-work, to ask leading employers – including Barclays, KPMG and Balfour Beatty to help develop innovative teaching materials for its new Level 3 Using and Applying Mathematics qualification.
The qualification is designed for young people who have achieved A*- C in GCSE maths and want to continue developing their maths skills for higher education or employment. The qualification blends mathematical thinking and understanding, with communication and ICT. Patrick Craven, City & Guilds UK, Head of Learning Assessment and Design Practice explains: “With the government drive to increase the number of 16-19 year olds continuing to study maths, getting this qualification right is very important. And working collaboratively with industry is a vital part of this.
“We want employers to help us shape this qualification so it delivers the workplace maths skills they need, and engages young people. Getting young people inspired by maths can be a challenge but by developing authentic business challenges we can demonstrate how the skills they’re learning in the classroom are essential for success in the workplace.” To help achieve these objectives today (Feb 13) City & Guilds and MyKindaCrowd are hosting a roundtable with employers to understand the workplace maths skills they want to see, and the issues they currently face. Employers will share business situations where they need employees to have higher maths skills.
These real-world industry challenges will then be used to create engaging and relevant teaching materials, classroom activities and assessment tasks for the new qualification. Mike Thompson, Head of Early Careers at Barclays, explains: “Higher level maths skills, like forecasting, interpreting statistics and using maths to inform decision-making, are essential for a career in banking. But all too often potential employees lack these vital skills.
“We’re passionate about helping more young people develop the numeracy skills they need to be successful in our industry. That’s why we’re working with City & Guilds to develop teaching materials for this new qualification. By providing examples of how we use higher maths skills in the banking world, City & Guilds can produce a qualification that delivers the workplace maths skills we need.” City & Guilds Level 3 Applying and Using Mathematics will be available from September 2015. For more information about the qualification visit www.cityandguilds.com/coremaths
