Schools will struggle to teach new basic maths and English courses without a vast injection of funding and training for teachers, the head of an exam board has said.

The qualifications are supposed to transform the chances of pupils who would otherwise leave school with literacy and numeracy problems, and were created after lobbying from business leaders.

They already make up part of the new diplomas and will be introduced as qualifications in their own right next September.

But Greg Watson, chief executive of the Oxford Cambridge and RSA (OCR) awarding body, told The Times that the success of the new functional skills qualifications could be damaged by the Government’s focus on the vocational part of the diplomas, which have garnered the lion’s share of funding.

He also said there was pressure to turn the qualification into a tick-box test that lots of people could pass.

The functional skills courses are “real life” qualifications that teach teenagers how to use English and maths in different contexts.

They will give pupils a practical grounding in how to apply numeracy, reading and writing to everyday situations, with a strong focus on discussion, explanation and problem-solving, rather than teaching abstract concepts and formulae.

The qualifications were created after complaints from employers that school-leavers they recruited lacked the ability to use simple maths and English in their jobs.

Learning such skills is seen as vitally important in the recession, as almost a million young people are already out of work.

The courses have been piloted for the last two years, with more than 43,000 of the tests already taken. But these pilots have shown that much more specialist training is needed for functional skills teachers, and that time needs to be set aside in the curriculum for the lessons, Mr Watson said.

“Just knowing some maths doesn’t help, if you can’t apply it to the particular job you’re going to do, for example a carpet fitter knowing how to calculate the correct quantity of carpet.

“This teaches pupils how to cope with real life problems, which aren’t going to be presented as mathematical problems once they leave school.

“They have to choose the right technique to come up with the answer, or the right way of communicating for the right occassion, eg a short note or a full report for the boss.

“Teachers must teach the practical application and how to use maths and English in a range of situations. They’re going to need a lot of support and investment in professional development.”

Mr Watson said teaching for the tests could not be crammed into existing GCSE English and maths lessons, adding: “It’s not just maths and English repackaged. Teaching an applied skill needs different approaches.

“The worry I have is there’s been a huge investment in the vocational element of the diploma - the Government has spent millions making sure teachers are confident about what they’re doing, but they haven’t yet put that investment into functional skills.

“For employers, this is the most important bit but there’s been relatively little support.

We’re developing tests that are not multiple-choice questions, because the answers are not something you can learn beforehand.”

Speaking at a conference in Birmingham earlier this month, Mr Watson said exam boards would come under pressure to produce tick-box style tests to assess pupils, so that a lot of pupils would pass.

If these were introduced, he said, this would prevent testing of whether candidates could use their skills in context.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, said: “We agree entirely with Greg Watson about the importance of ensuring that all young people gain the functional skills that they need to operate effectively in life and work.

“We are making functional skills a core part of the new curriculum from September 2010. We are already investing over £4m this year to prepare all schools to teach functional skills.”

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