Correspondence

ESFA Update further education: 13 March 2019

Published 13 March 2019

This correspondence was withdrawn on 21 December 2020

This has been withdrawn as it’s out of date. Find the latest information from ESFA in the latest ESFA Update.

Applies to England

1. Action: technical education – request for feedback on new T Level outline content by Monday 8 April 2019

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education is asking for providers’ views on T Level outline content. This includes size and deliverability, for qualifications within the Construction, Digital and Legal, Finance and Accounting sectors, which will roll out in 2021 to 2022.

We are collecting your views through an online survey.

Please read the respective T Level outline content before answering the survey questions for a particular qualification:

• Construction T Level outline content
• Digital T Level outline content
• Legal, Finance & Accounting T Level outline content

We would like to encourage you to take this opportunity to give honest views, to ensure we have robust evidence on which to inform decisions on funding and final content.

If you have questions of the team, please email Employer.Panels@education.gov.uk. We will monitor the mailbox daily during the consultation period to provide quick responses from policy experts.

2. Reminder: register of apprenticeship training providers - subcontractors

We would remind providers that all organisations wanting to access ESFA funding to deliver apprenticeship training must now be on the register of apprenticeship training providers (RoATP). This includes subcontractors delivering less than £100,000 of apprenticeship training a year. All subcontractors must be listed on the RoATP from August 2019.

All organisations wanting to deliver apprenticeship training as a subcontractor from August 2019, that are not already listed on the RoATP, should apply by the end of April 2019 to be confident of being admitted to the register prior to August.

Lead providers will need to make sure that their subcontractors are aware of this if they wish to continue to partner with them from August 2019 onwards.

3. Information: advanced learner loans prospectus and catalogue

We have published the prospectus for advanced learner loans in the funding year 2019 to 2020. This document sets out how we designate qualifications for loans.

The main changes for 2019 to 2020 are:

• awarding organisations no longer have to sign the Learner Records Service agreement before asking us to designate qualifications
• a new monthly deadline for awarding organisations to send notification forms

We have also published the first edition of the catalogue of qualifications designated for loans in 2019 to 2020. In the Hub, we will add loans funding validity for these qualifications on 20 March 2019.

If you have any further queries, please contact the service desk.

4. Information: learning aim class codes 2019 to 2020 and learning aims category codes, version 4

We have published our guide to using learning aim class codes for 2019 to 2020.

This document sets out the details of the classification and coding system to be used to record non-regulated activity in the Individualised Learner Record (ILR) for 2019 to 2020. There are no material changes from the 2018 to 2019 version of this document.

We have also published version 4 of our guide to using learning aims category codes.

This document describes the categories used within the Learning Aim Reference Service (LARS) for the 2019 to 2020 academic year (1 August to 31 July). The only change in version 4 is a new code for identifying learning aims specified by the devolved areas for the devolved adult education budget (AEB).

If you have any feedback on this guidance, please contact the service desk marking your query for the attention of the ‘Rates and Learning Aims’ group.

5. Information: ESFA list of qualifications approved for funding 14 to 19 (formerly known as section 96)

The title of the section 96 website has changed to the ESFA list of qualifications approved for funding 14 to 19.

This website shows which qualifications are approved for funding for students who are at least aged 14 but are not yet 19 and which age ranges the qualification has been approved for.

We have made this change so that:

• the title of the website more accurately describes the information that it contains
• we describe to you the qualifications funding approval process for pre and post-19 in a simpler and consistent way