Functional skills are critical foundational skills for procurement and commercial professionals. Everything we do in procurement involves information processing, numeracy and communication. In response to the UK Government’s recent policy change regarding the requirement for functional skills on apprenticeship programmes, Cordie has revised and published an updated Functional Skills Policy.
Our revised policy can be viewed here.
In short, we recognise that functional skills are no longer a mandatory element of UK Government-funded apprenticeship programmes. Our revised policy therefore outlines:
Functional skills remain an essential set of core skills for all procurement and commercial learners and are highly recommended to support the completion of CIPS professional qualification programmes
Cordie will continue to request Maths and English certificates as part of the application process for our apprenticeship programmes
If a learner does not possess Level 2 functional skills (or equivalent) we will discuss the requirements with both the learner and their employer
We reserve right to request any applicant completes a functional skills assessment and also to recommend appropriate and relevant support towards the achievement of functional skills
Any agreed functional skills support will become part of the tri-partite learning commitment with the learner and their employer and therefore normal progression is expected
Entry onto all Cordie programmes continues to remain at our sole discretion only.
Why Functional skills?
You will find a lot of discussion about the relevance of functional skills qualifications online. Some have argued that it is an unnecessary paper qualification that does not serve a lot of relevance to learners already successfully in employment.
We do not agree with these views. Functional skills are a core part of the essential skill-set for anyone within procurement or commercial roles, and therefore the completion of a minimum standard of functional skills education is highly desirable.
To succeed, procurement and commercial staff need to assess large quantities of written and numeric data, form commercial judgements and communicate decisions with colleagues and stakeholders. This information processing requires good standards of literacy and numeracy.
The Cordie procurement apprenticeship programmes at Levels 3, 4 and 6 all require the successful completion of professional procurement qualifications from the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS). To be effective in their exam preparation, a learner requires good levels of maths and English.
So in conclusion, while the UK Government has removed the mandatory requirements of functional skills across all apprenticeship programmes, Cordie maintains these are still highly desirable (if not essential) for specific procurement and commercial apprenticeship programmes.
If you would like to find out any more about our apprenticeship programmes, or our provision of functional skills, please get in touch via the contact form at the bottom of this page. We would love to hear from you!