Correspondence

ESFA Update further education: 22 March 2023

Published 22 March 2023

Applies to England

1. Action: complete your application for a senior mental health lead training grant

You can apply now for a grant to train a senior mental health lead.

You must complete your grant application for this financial year by 31 March 2023.

To start your grant application, visit the senior mental health lead training grant funding page.

If you have already completed part 1 of your application your grant is reserved. If you do not book a DfE quality assured training course and complete part 2 of the form by 31 March 2023, your grant may be reallocated to another school or college.

To complete your application, please visit the part 2 form guidance and complete the form.

You can find further information and guidance on GOV.UK.

2. Reminder: final opportunity to register to deliver T Levels and the T Level Transition Programme from the 2024 to 2025 academic year

This is the final opportunity for providers not currently delivering T Levels to register their intention to deliver T Levels in the 2024 to 2025 academic year and receive implementation planning support. The registration portal will close at midnight on 24 March 2023.

Providers will require a DfE sign-in account to register and only providers not signed-up to deliver T Levels already should apply.

The registration portal and supporting guidance can be accessed on GOV.UK.

If you are instead planning to commence delivery of T Levels from September 2025, the registration process for this will open on 27 March 2023 and closes on 22 March 2024.

Current T Level approved providers do not need to submit a registration form to deliver T Levels.

If you have an enquiry regarding the registration process, or if you want to confirm you are registered, you can check the GOV.UK T Level provider list, or contact the [email protected] mailbox quoting your organisation’s name and UKPRN in the subject header.

3. Information: college MPM return

During week commencing 27 March 2023, ESFA will be contacting FE college principals in their capacity as accounting officers to ask them to complete a ‘College MPM return’, covering the period 29 November 2022 to 31 March 2023, following colleges’ reclassification to the central government sector.

The return is necessary because ESFA needs assurance that colleges have complied with the new HMT Managing Public Money requirements, which apply from 29 November 2022. This return will help provide assurance to our accounting officer and the National Audit Office on the regularity of funds provided to colleges, to be reported in ESFA’s accounts for the year ending 31 March 2023.

The return will be a simple one - we have sought to minimise the information collection, as far as possible, and does not need to be audited. It should be emailed back to ESFA by Friday, 28 April 2023 using the address: [email protected].ESFA will contact colleges individually, if any further information is required. We will also conduct some validation work on a sample of returns and contact colleges accordingly.

4. Information: College Financial Forecasting Return (CFFR)

We are aiming to release the updated College Financial Forecasting Return (CFFR) by the end of April 2023, for colleges to submit by 31 July 2023.

The option for colleges to provide year-to-date actuals will change. We need to be able to estimate movements occurring from April 2023 onwards, therefore, the updated CFFR will only allow a year-to-date actual up to March 2023.

Other changes to the template itself will include:

• New lines that capture detailed energy costs so that we have a better understanding of the pressures that colleges are under
• Additional data validation and error checks that will minimise resubmissions
• Other minor bug fixes

If you have any questions, please use our online enquiry form.

5. Information: funding allocation statements for 2023 to 2024

We have started to upload revenue funding allocation statements for non-maintained special schools, and 16 to 19 allocation statements for Independent Learning Providers and Special Post-16 Institutions. We are on track to issue them all by the end of March 2023. Once your allocation statement is available, you will receive a notification and can find it on Document Exchange in the ‘Documents received from ESFA’ section. Your allocation statement includes a breakdown of our calculation. 

We have published guidance to help you understand your statement.

6. Information: Share your Skills recruitment campaign

The Department for Education are looking to bring to life the stories of current Further Education (FE) lecturers to help provide an authentic perspective of what FE teaching is like. The ‘Share your Skills’ recruitment campaign advocates the voices of FE teachers to help encourage industry professionals to make the move to FE, whether that is full-time or part-time.

If you know any FE lecturers, please do encourage them to get in touch with Max Davey - [email protected] – who will share with them the context of the campaign, what they can expect their involvement to be, and answer any questions they may have.

Ideally, but not essential, the campaign is looking for FE lecturers who have come from the following industries:

• Engineering & Manufacturing
• Construction
• Health & Social Care
• Digital & IT
• Law, business & finance
• Agriculture

7. Information: payment profiles for academic year 2023 to 2024

In January we said we would confirm payment profiles for academic year 2023 to 2024. This is part of the reclassification of further education (FE) colleges, sixth form colleges and designated institutions in England to the public sector.

From academic year 2023 to 2024 onwards, we will pay allocations in 12 equal instalments to the following institutions receiving 16 to 19 and adult education budget grant funding. We already pay local authority maintained and academy sixth forms in this way.

There is no change to the advanced learner loans bursary, and we will still pay this in 3 instalments: 50% in August, 25% in January and 25% in April.

7.1 16 to 19 funding (including high needs)

• FE colleges and all other FE institutions, including local authorities for their FE provision, independent learning providers and special post-16 institutions.

7.2 Non-devolved adult grant funding

• all grant funded institutions, including colleges and local authorities it does not include independent learning providers.

8. Information: bookings are open for new Apprenticeship Workforce Development (AWD) courses

Booking is now open for live online, face-to-face and in-house Apprenticeship Workforce Development (AWD) courses. These nine informative courses support all those involved in the delivery of apprenticeships, from those new to trainer/assessor/teacher roles, through to strategic leaders, governors and governance professionals supporting apprenticeship delivery.

Launched in January 2021, the Department for Education (DfE) funded AWD programme provides free, high-quality, continuous professional development (CPD) training and resources to support staff at all levels and roles to deliver high-quality apprenticeship provision. Feedback from programme participants has been positive, with a 96% satisfaction rate so far.

Now in its second phase, the AWD programme is being delivered by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), in partnership with the Association of Colleges (AoC), Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), Strategic Development Network (SDN) and University Vocational Awards Council (UVAC).

9. Information: funding rules monitoring report ‘Apprenticeship off-the-job training hours (OTJT) below the minimum’ (FRM37)

The funding rules monitoring report ‘Apprenticeship off-the-job training hours (OTJT) below the minimum’ (FRM37) is now available in the post-16 monitoring dashboard. If you deliver apprenticeships, please access the dashboard to view these errors and correct your data in time for the R08 ILR submission.

There is specific guidance on how we calculate the thresholds and what you need to do to ensure that you’re reporting OTJT correctly.

You must calculate planned OTJT hours using the methodology described in the funding rules, and also recorded on the training plan and apprenticeship agreement by all relevant parties at the outset of the apprenticeship programme. When recording the start of the apprenticeship in your ILR data, you must report the number of planned OTJT hours for the whole programme in the planned hours field. This field is mandatory and must accurately reflect the evidence documented on the apprenticeship agreement and training plan.

10. Information: 16 to 19 distance subcontracting requests

Lead providers that subcontract 16 to 19 provision are required to seek prior approval for the delivery of geographically distant 16 to 19 study programme provision where the delivery location is outside the lead provider’s normal recruitment area.

Previously, lead providers have been required to download a form and email it. From Wednesday 22 March 2023, we are piloting the use of an online form to submit distance subcontracting requests.

If you need to submit a distance subcontracting request, there is guidance available on GOV.UK. You will need to email [email protected] to obtain a link to the form, enabling you to complete it.

If you have any feedback on using the online form, please email [email protected]