Correspondence

ESFA Update further education: 6 September 2023

Published 6 September 2023

Applies to England

1. Action: 2023 to 2024 Advanced learner loans performance management point 1

We’ve published the first time request form for an advanced learner loans contract.

You must send your completed request forms to [email protected] before 5pm on Monday 18 September 2023.

For further information on the performance review of loans, please refer to the advanced learner loans funding rules: 2023 to 2024.

2. Information: applications are now open for the Teacher Mentoring Programme 2023 to 2024

Applications for the Teacher Mentoring Programme (TMP) are officially open.

The Teacher Mentoring Programme is funded by the Department for Education and delivered by Cognition Learning Group and aims to improve mentoring support in the Further Education sector.

Enrolled participants will benefit from live online training delivered by mentoring experts, to help develop skills to mentor other teachers and trainers.

For eligible organisations, there’s an optional grant of up to £5,000 per mentor. Each organisation can have a maximum of 5 mentors enrolled, meaning a maximum grant of up to £25,000.

We’re also offering grants of up to £1,500 toward the development of mentoring networks.

To express your interest in the TMP and learn more about the grants, courses, masterclasses and resources available to support you on your mentoring journey, visit cognitionmentoringprogrammes.com.

If you have already submitted your expression of interest, you can now fill out the formal application.

3. Information: compare your curriculum efficiency

The new ‘Compare your curriculum efficiency’ tool has recently been updated and now includes a fuller set of the most up-to-date submitted finance record data.

Please note that, if you have downloaded the previous version of the tool prior to 22 August, we have identified a minor technical issue: filtering on dependency on 16 to 19 income sometimes previously returned results that did not exactly match that group of colleges.

The updated version has now been uploaded to View Your Education Data (VYED), containing the new data, and with the technical issue corrected. Please feedback on improvements we can make to the tool for next year by using the feedback button on the front page of the tool.

4. Information: R12 in-year qualification achievement rate (QAR) 2022 to 2023

The department is planning to release your in-year 2022 to 2023 QAR data in the week commencing 11 September and will confirm when this data is available through ESFA Update and Communities. All data will be made available through the View Your Education Data portal.

A small number of providers have been identified as incorrectly recording a break in learning as a learner withdrawal, which is negatively impacting their QAR. In these cases, the learner has been incorrectly recorded as a withdrawal, even though the learner subsequently returned within the same academic year to their apprenticeship on the same standard, with the same provider and employer.

In this case, providing the learner returned to the same provider and employer within the current academic year, providers should amend their data to record the completion status as a break in learning (“6. Learner has temporarily withdrawn from the aim due to an agreed break in learning”).

Providers have until R14 deadline, 6pm on Thursday 19 October 2023, to correct their data and change the completion status accordingly, where they identify that this applies to them. For further information on correcting errors in the ILR, please refer to Provider Support Manual: 2023 to 2024 - Correcting errors.

If you have any queries in relation to Qualification Achievement Rates (QAR), please use the online enquiry form, and select the QAR query type. Further advice and support can also be found under the Help Centre articles and Communities section for peer support.

5. Information: webinar – DfE formal response to FE funding and accountability reform

Our reforms play a critical role in achieving the ambitions set out in the Skills for Jobs White Paper: to create a further education (FE) system that delivers high-quality training which leads to good, sustainable jobs and in turn transforms people’s lives.

If you are interested in understanding the proposals in more detail, please see the consultation outcome for ‘Implementing a new FE funding and accountability system’.

DfE is hosting a webinar on Thursday 28 September, this will be an opportunity for the FE sector to hear an overview of the reforms, discuss our formal response and to ask questions. Please register for the webinar online.