Correspondence

ESFA Update further education: 28 June 2023

Published 28 June 2023

Applies to England

1. Action: register now to deliver T Levels for the first time in the 2025 to 2026 academic year

The registration portal opened earlier this year to allow providers to register to deliver T Levels for the first time in the 2025 to 2026 academic year and closes at midnight on the 22 March 2024.

We encourage providers to register before 28 July 2023 to access the full implementation planning support on offer, up-front revenue and specialist equipment funding, and to be considered for any future buildings and facilities improvement grant funding that may be available to support delivery in 2025.

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

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

2. Information: interactive post-16 census tool 2023 to 2024 now available

We’ve updated our post-16 interactive tool to support you with returning accurate post-16 school census data. Some institutions risk not getting the funding they should because of inaccurate data.

The tool will help you understand:

• how your data is used to calculate your post-16 funding
• how common data errors affect your funding

We’ve noted that providers have had particular issues recording T Level data correctly, including:

• recording programmes that only last for 1 year, rather than 2
• recording planned hours that fall below the minimum for T Level funding

The tool has information on how we use T Level data, and how incorrect data will affect funding. There is also specific information on recording T Level data on GOV.UK.

Business managers and staff responsible for preparing and submitting the autumn school census return will find this useful.

A suite of ESFA funding reports will be available in COLLECT when the autumn census opens in October. They will show you how your data looks in relation to our post-16 funding calculations. We strongly advise institutions to use these reports to help quality assure census returns.

3. Information: national professional qualification (NPQ) targeted support funding 2022 to 2023 grant allocations

We’ve published the national professional qualification (NPQ) targeted support funding 2022 to 2023 grant allocations for participants who started in the 2022 to 2023 academic year.

We’ve also updated the ‘eligibility’ section of the national professional qualification (NPQ) targeted support funding: conditions of grant for the 2022 to 2023 academic year, alongside these.

We will pay the 2022 to 2023 allocations to local authority maintained schools in June 2023 and to academies in July 2023. We will make a further payment to independent special schools from July 2023 onwards.

A sweep up payment will be made in autumn 2023, to ensure all eligible schools and organisations not captured in the summer 2023 payment window are paid in year.

If you think your school or organisation meets the eligibility criteria but has not yet received a payment as indicated on the published grant allocations, please contact your training provider to check that confirmation of training engagement has been submitted to the department.

If you don’t have a training provider or have any queries, please contact [email protected].

You can read further information on targeted support funding and more information on NPQs currently available can be viewed in our course prospectus.

The tool is in a Microsoft Excel workbook, please make sure that macros are enabled so that the workbook functions properly.

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

4. Information: COVID-19 recovery premium grant 2022 to 2023, June 2023 allocations

We’ve published the June 2023 allocations for the recovery premium grant for the 2022 to 2023 academic year.

5. Information: ESFA adult education budget (AEB) funding rules 2023 to 2024

We will publish an update to the ESFA adult education budget (AEB) funding rules 2023 to 2024 (1 August 2023 to 31 July 2024) during early July.

This update is for the inclusion of the performance management rules for 2023 to 2024. The rules apply to all providers of education and training who receive AEB funding from the Secretary of State for Education acting through ESFA. This will also include information on the review process for AEB allocations that we referred to earlier this month.

If you have any feedback regarding the funding rules, please contact us using the online enquiry form or speak to your territorial lead.

6. Information: apprenticeships provider accountability framework dashboard

An update to the provider-facing dashboard that supports the apprenticeships accountability framework has been made. Providers can view the dashboard (available in private beta) on View your education data.

Functionality has now been added to allow providers to drill-down to learner level data. This has been added in response to user feedback.

The apprenticeship accountability framework came into effect in September 2021 and is a more timely, proactive approach to accountability for apprenticeship training providers, based on a wider range of quality metrics.

Further clarifications were made to the policy in February 2023.