Curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability support
How colleges and designated institutions can ask for help with curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability planning from the FE Commissioner's team.
Applies to England
Curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability support (CEFSS) aims to help further education (FE) colleges with costed curriculum and financial planning. It is part of the active support package, which offers a wide range of help and support for colleges.
You can request curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability support at any time during the year. It is designed to flexibly meet the requirements of all types of eligible colleges.
There is no cost for accessing support from the FE Commissioner but you’ll need to commit both time and resources.
Eligibility
Curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability support is available to any college that’s not subject to FE Commissioner intervention. This includes:
- general FE colleges
- sixth-form colleges
- land-based or specialist colleges
- special designated institutions
What’s involved
This support is different to work usually carried out by the FE Commissioner. When reviewing your college, we’ll not make a judgement of the college, the work you have done or are planning to do.
We’ll work collaboratively with your senior team to improve curriculum planning and efficiency. This may include using our own experiences or data from other colleges to benchmark performance.
As curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability support is bespoke and flexible, there is no fixed length of time you’ll receive support for.
We’ll agree with you the best approach for giving you support. This includes whether a face-to-face visit is needed at each stage or if any work can be completed virtually.
Support process
Curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability support is delivered in 3 stages. After each stage, we’ll check you want to continue getting support.
Stage 1
Curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability support starts with an initial informal discussion to explore your options. During this initial discussion, we’ll agree with you:
- what support we can offer
- terms of reference
- timeline and key milestones
- proposed outputs
- how to evaluate the impact this support has made
If you agree, we’ll arrange a visit (either onsite or online) to have a more detailed discussion about your plans and processes.
Stage 2
If you decides to progress with curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability support, we’ll begin by working with your senior leadership team to look at the range of your current data, comparing it to similar colleges and sector benchmarks.
We’ll work with you to develop suggested actions relating to curriculum planning and efficiency improvements. This might include working with a national leader of further education.
Stage 3
We’ll give you a confidential report containing suggested actions for improvement and may also assign you a national leader of further education to work with. It is up to your senior leadership team and board of governors to decide whether to implement the suggested actions.
You’ll still be able to contact us for help and support with implementing the suggested actions and improvements.
We’ll ask for feedback on the support we’ve given. We may also ask if you’re happy for us to share with the sector any effective practices you’ve developed as a result of this support.
Request support
Email [email protected] if you have any questions or to ask for curriculum efficiency and financial sustainability support.