Correspondence

ESFA Update further education: 10 May 2023

Published 10 May 2023

Applies to England

1. Information: college financial forecasting return (CFFR)

We’ve published a college financial forecasting return (CFFR) template for colleges to complete and return, via the Identity and Access Management System (IDAMS) online portal, by 31 July 2023.

As this is a mandatory return and part of ESFA’s ongoing review of college financial health and budget forecasting, we will provide ongoing support and guidance to ensure the sector is confident when completing and submitting the returns.

If the person responsible for submitting these documents does not have access to the IDAMS system, they can request an account using the ‘I don’t have an account’ link on the login page.

We’ve also published the college financial planning handbook for 2023.  There are some important updates to the handbook this year linked to the completion of the CFFR and the commentary.

2. Information: 16 to 19 tuition fund 2023 to 2024 claim form

The 16 to 19 tuition fund 2023 to 2024 opt in/out digital form is now live.

The deadline for your submission is 11:59pm on 26 May 2023.

We’ve published guidance to access and help you complete the form.

3. Information: update on the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) for 2023 to 2024

For the CIF 2023 to 2024 round, we are aiming to announce the outcomes by the end of May 2023, and following this announcement we will be holding a live interactive webinar.

The webinar is for responsible bodies with successful projects in the CIF 2023 to 2024 funding round. Our aim is help you understand the reporting actions you need to take while delivering your CIF project so that you can continue to receive payments in line with your project spend.

The webinar will be held via Microsoft Teams, with an opportunity for some Q&A, and is aimed at anyone who is responsible for overseeing, managing, or reporting on CIF projects (accounting officers, business managers, project managers).

It will also offer practical advice on how to make sure that you are taking an appropriate level of oversight of the project and reporting progress on the CIF portal.

We will write to you shortly with further details.

4. Information: Apprenticeships Accountability Framework

An update to the provider-facing dashboard that supports the Apprenticeships Accountability Framework has been made. Providers can view the dashboard (available in test environment) in View your education data.

The update includes:

• A technical fix to the ‘Learners Past Planned End Date’ measure
• We have amended the ‘Breaks in Learning’ measure to address an issue raised on learner reference date. We are aware of an issue raised around the levy / non-levy status of learners for this measure and are working to resolve this.

We will continue to update the dashboard on a rolling basis, considering user feedback as we do so.

We will also be adding metrics for the quality indicators included in the framework that are not yet shown in the dashboard, including off-the-job training data, achievement and retention rates, and apprentice feedback.

We are also working on functionality to allow providers to drill-down to learner level data. This will be included in a future update to the dashboard by early summer.

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.

5. Your feedback: volunteer to take part in curriculum and financial efficiency planning user research

You’re invited to take part in a confidential online interview about the design of a new curriculum finance planning efficiency benchmarking tool.

We are looking at how it can support colleges in their financial efficiency planning activities using data that has been submitted in the finance record. This research will take place throughout 2023.

To express your interest in taking part please fill in this short survey and a user researcher will be in touch with more details to schedule an interview.

If you have any questions about the research, please contact us.