Functional Skills English
Guidance Note on the Assessment of Speaking, Listening
and Communication
Introduction
This Guidance Note is aimed at centres that are delivering or planning to deliver the
Speaking, Listening and Communication component of Functional Skills English.
This component must be internally assessed by centres in accordance with the
Ofqual regulations for Controlled Assessment for Functional Skills.
The bullet points below provide centres with a mixture of advice and guidance, along
with clarification on some of SQA’s requirements.
Planning

Ensure that subjects/topics/scenarios selected allow candidates to meet all
the required criteria (e.g. complex information, unfamiliar topics etc.
depending on the Level being assessed). Centres should avoid topics that
may be particularly controversial and/or sensitive, such as those concerning
political or religious matters.

Do not ‘lead’ the candidate by giving too much guidance, e.g. for a
presentation it is up to the candidate to decide the sequence rather than for
the assessor to provide a suggested framework to follow. Remember that the
assessor can prompt learners to start the discussion but must not contribute
to the discussion itself.

The candidates should be allowed sufficient time to prepare for the
assessments, make sure that they are not penalised by restricting the period
research to a very short time (e.g. 20 minutes), some candidates will find it
easy to research and prepare whilst others will take longer. They are being
assessed on the ability to prepare not on how quickly they can do this.

Candidates can use (and in most cases would be expected to use) notes to
refresh their memory during a discussion or presentation. These should be
notes only and not a report or a verbatim transcription of their
contribution.

If slides (e.g. PowerPoint) are used as part of the presentation (remember
they are not compulsory, it is up to a candidate how they present) then the
slides should not contain large amounts of text; this is equivalent to the
candidate writing out their presentation in full and lend themselves to simply
reading the contents of the slides.

Ensure that your Internal Verifier (IV/IQA) is aware when the assessments will
take place so that they can observe the assessments if this forms part of their
sampling plan.
Assessment

Complete the Assessor Reports (one per candidate per assessment)

Ensure that the assessor comments against each criteria are sufficiently
detailed and specific so that someone (the IV/IQA or EV/EQA) who was not
present during the assessment can visualise what happened and what was
said and is in a position to confirm (or otherwise) the assessment decision. It
is not sufficient to say ‘the candidate made relevant contributions’ or
‘Answered questions confidently’, much more detail and specific examples of
the candidate input are needed. Clear justification should be given, including
key phrases/actions/words used by the candidate during the
discussion/presentation.

Collect notes etc. from the candidate, if these are computer produced then
they should be signed or initialled and dated by the candidate to authenticate
them.

Feedback to candidates should be constructive, valid, detailed, and
appropriate and should provide a suitable summary of the assessment as a
whole.

Pass assessment plans, Assessor Reports and candidate notes to IV/IQA.
Internal Quality Assurance (IV/IQA)

Ensure that a sampling plan is maintained.

Sample in accordance with sampling plan (including any candidates who have
failed one or more assessments).

Ensure that all documents sampled show evidence of sampling.

Document detailed feedback to assessors individually for each assessment
sampled.

Update sampling plan with details of sampling and results allocated to every
candidate assessed (pass and fail) for each assessment.
Providing Sample to SQA for Verification

If your centre is selected for Verification, SQA will ask you to submit the
relevant materials for External Verification.

If there are 12 or less candidates in the group which has been assessed then
they will all need to be submitted to SQA irrespective of whether they passed
or failed one or both assessments.

If there are more than 12 candidates in the group who have been assessed
then you will need to select a sample of 12 candidates (including, where
possible, both candidates who have passed and who have failed).

Complete the form VS00 (provided by SQA) showing details of the number of
candidates in the group, details of the candidates being submitted for
verification and your results. Please leave the column for verification results
and the box for confirmation of results blank for completion by the External
Verifier.

Submit to SQA the completed Form VS00 together with the completed
sampling plan, IV/IQA feedback for all assessments sampled and, for each
candidate listed on Form VS00, original (not photocopied) Assessment Plans,
assessor comments and candidate notes for every assessment undertaken.
Remember that SQA will carry out verification of your assessment and quality
assurance processes and decisions based on the documentation that you
submit. Please check it before submission to ensure that all the required
papers have been included and that all documentation is sufficiently detailed
so that assessment and verification processes and decisions can be clearly
followed and understood.