Functional skills are the day-to-day skills we all need to use to operate successfully in life, learning, and work. Whilst the full launch of functional skills is not until 2010, City & Guilds is piloting Functional Skills awards from September 2007.

Each functional skills awarding body is piloting a slightly different assessment model: City & Guilds' approach consists of centre-marked task based assessments.

Functional skills are available in English, Maths and ICT from Entry 1 to Level 2.  They can be done on their own or as part of another qualification and they are part of the new 14-19 Diplomas.