Communicating the changes to Essential Skills Wales
Senior Qualifications Manager Oliver Stacey details our proposals for reforming the Essential Skills Wales communication qualifications.
Communication and literacy skills are vital for navigating the modern world.
Being able to communicate clearly in both written and spoken form, listening and responding to a variety of viewpoints and extracting information from a range of written texts are crucial competencies needed for life, learning and work.
Following an in-depth review into Essential Skills Wales, we are reforming the qualifications to ensure they remain relevant and engaging as well as being manageable for centres to deliver and learners to complete. Below we summarise the key changes we are proposing to Essential Skills Wales communication qualifications as well as the reasoning behind them.
Clearer progression between levels
To address the findings from our review around overlap and duplication of content between levels in the existing qualifications, we are proposing to revise and restructure the content to:
- include more explicit statements around the required level of proficiency in spelling, punctuation and grammar at each level of the qualification to help differentiate more clearly between the levels
- group statements on related skill areas within each level of the qualifications so that the differences in expectations around each skill at each level are clearer to distinguish - this makes it easier to identify progression when moving up the levels
A more manageable assessment model
We received strong feedback during our review that the assessment model at levels 1 and 2 was too long and that this impacted the manageability of the qualification by making it challenging for centres to deliver in the time available. To address this finding we have proposed a different approach to assessment that significantly reduces the overall assessment time.
We are proposing two assessments within the new qualification. The first assessment will be in two parts (part A will assess reading and part B writing). The reading component will be similar to the current confirmatory test and will be automatically marked. The writing component would be externally marked by the awarding body using human markers. The second assessment will test speaking and listening skills using a similar format to the existing qualification.
Assessing writing through an external assessment has the benefit of significantly reducing the overall assessment time because it removes the need for a long controlled task. Additionally, it reduces workload for centres as they are no longer required to mark the writing tasks.
At entry level, we do not think there needs to be a test. Instead, we think the qualification can be assessed internally, for example through a portfolio of evidence, or a series of tasks.
A new qualification title
We are also proposing to change the title of the qualification from Essential Communication Skills to Essential Literacy Skills. This would have several benefits:
- ‘Literacy’ more accurately reflects the content of the qualification.
- It helps clearly signal the difference between the current Essential Skills Wales qualification and the new one.
- A title change in this subject is consistent with the approach we are taking with application of number and digital skills, where we are also proposing changes to the qualification titles.
Have Your Say
The consultation on reformed Essential Skills Wales qualifications is open until 5 February 2026. You can read more about our proposals in our consultation report, and help shape the future of Essential Skills Wales by completing the consultation on our Have Your Say page.