ESFA Update further education: 20 February 2019
Published 20 February 2019
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2019
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1. Action: 2018 to 2019 Advanced Learner Loans facility requests
The growth and new facility request forms for Advanced Learner Loans are now available.
Completed request forms must be sent to AllFacility.REQUESTS@education.gov.uk before 5pm on Friday 1 March 2019.
Providers must submit a growth request form to be considered for an increase.
For further information, please refer to the Advanced Learner Loans funding and performance management rules 2018 to 2019.
2. Action: T-Levels how to express an interest to deliver in 2021 to 2022 academic year, including the transition offer
The Department for Education (DfE) is looking to identify the next tranche of providers to deliver T Levels in the 2021 to 2022 academic year.
In January 2019 we published information about how institutions meeting set criteria can express an interest to deliver T Levels in 2021 to 2022 academic year.
The deadline to submit an expression of interest is midnight on Thursday 28 February 2019.
3. Action: apprenticeship levy survey
The government announced during Budget plans to engage with business and providers on the development of apprenticeships post-2020.
We have released a survey as part of this engagement, which is open to all apprenticeship employers, providers and representative organisations.
We would appreciate your views.
4. Action: apprenticeship training providers – user research
We are currently working on things for the future and we would like to invite apprenticeship training providers to participate in our research. Your feedback can help us make improvements to the service we offer.
If you are interested in taking part, please complete our online form.
5. Information: register of apprenticeship training providers (RoATP) application process clarifications
We have received a number of queries on the RoATP application process. We can confirm we will accept short inspections, which confirm an overall grade of good no more than 3 years prior to the application where a provider was awarded:
- an apprenticeship grade of outstanding or good in their most recent inspection, for the purposes of question PR-1 of the application
- an overall grade of outstanding or good in the remit of FE and Skills for the purposes of question PR-4 of the application
Please note that we now ask that applicants use their UKPRN number only as the file name for all uploads in the application process. Applications that do not follow this format will be delayed.
Finally, we would like to remind applicants that they should apply to a single application route only: Main, Employer or Supporting. Where we receive multiple applications to different routes from a single provider, they will be rejected.
6. Information: 2018 to 2019 non-levy apprenticeships over-delivery
Further to the over-delivery Update article on 30 January, we have been monitoring providers’ delivery. We can confirm that we are now in a position to fund over-delivery from January 2018 to March 2019, including delivery that exceeds your contract allocation, in accordance with the funding rules.
Over-delivery is subject to affordability and conditional on your compliance with the terms of the funding rules and your contract with ESFA. We anticipate having enough budget to fund all over-delivery. However, if after completing due diligence this turns out not to be the case, we will write further to all providers where there is over-delivery to tell them of the criteria that will be used to allocate the budget available.
We plan to issue variations for over-delivery to R06 in February and will revisit 2018 to 2019 financial year capping again in May and November. As a reminder, we will no longer be funding over-delivery from 1 April 2019.
7. Information: apprenticeship funding bands update
The Secretary of State has approved a further recommendation from the review of apprenticeship funding bands, led by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. The Digital and Technology Solutions Professional apprenticeship will be moved into funding band 28 (£25,000) on Monday 13 May 2019. Further information on this change is available.
The Department for Education (DfE) has asked the Institute to continue to bring older standards into the new band structure and have commissioned reviews of a further 30 standards. Further information on the standards affected is available.
8. Information: 16 to 19 revenue funding allocation statements for 2019 to 2020
At the end of the week, we will start to upload 16 to 19 revenue funding allocation statements for schools and academies to ESFA Information Exchange. At the same time, we will publish a short video and guidance to help you understand your allocation statement.
We expect most statements to be available by the end of February and the remainder by the end of March. Your allocation includes a breakdown of our calculation. Please use your allocation calculation toolkit and guidance to understand the data we have used.
You can find your file in the ESFA Information Exchange in the Document Exchange ‘Revenue Funding’ folder, under ‘AY 2019-20 (2019/20)’.
The deadline for business cases is 30 April 2019. We will apply minimum thresholds to decide whether we will consider your case. Please review the thresholds published in the supporting information before submitting your business case.
Please contact us using our online enquiry form if you have any questions.
9. Information: National Apprenticeship Week 2019 (NAW2019) – Blaze a Trail
The 12th annual National Apprenticeship Week will run from 4 to 8 March 2019.
The theme for NAW2019 is ‘Blaze a Trail’, inspired by our ‘Fire it Up’ marketing campaign.
If you are hosting an event during NAW2019 please add it to our events map. This will help promote your event and help to encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to start an apprenticeship.
You can find a NAW2019 logo and 3 supporting documents (one for apprentices, employers and stakeholders) on our resources page.
We will be active on social media to help promote apprenticeships throughout the week. Please join us and include @Apprenticeships, #BlazeATrail and #NAW2019 in your posts.
If you have any further questions, please email The.Week@education.gov.uk.
10. Information: ESFA communication survey – findings and next steps
In December 2018, we ran a customer survey to gain feedback as part of our constant drive for improving our communications. The feedback has provided us with insight into how customers communicate with us and find out about issues relevant to them.
We have published the survey findings along with the next steps we will take to improve our communications to you.
We would like to thank everyone who responded to the survey.