Correspondence

ESFA Update local authorities: 20 September 2023

Published 20 September 2023

Applies to England

1. Action: final week to submit your 2022 to 2023 year-end statement for the National Tutoring Programme (NTP)

Thank you to those who have completed their year-end statement.

Schools and local authorities (including virtual school heads) that received the 2022 to 2023 NTP grant have until 2pm on Friday 29 September to submit the year-end statement.

You must report all tutoring delivered in the 2022 to 2023 academic year (from 1 September 2022 to 31 August 2023). Failure to submit the form will result in your full funding allocation being recovered by the ESFA.

We’ve published guidance on how to submit your year-end statement, which includes a short video for schools.

Short video for schools.

If you experience any technical issues with the form, contact the ESFA Help Centre.

For any other tutoring queries, contact the NTP support desk.

2. Information: early years supplementary grant (EYSG) funding allocations for local authorities for 2023 to 2024

In July we published information about the £204 million additional early years funding for 2023 to 2024 for local authorities through the early years supplementary grant (EYSG). The grant is to enable local authorities to uplift the funding rates for their childcare providers from September 2023 to March 2024 period for delivering the existing early years entitlements.

We have already published the methodology guidance, conditions of grant and the EYSG hourly funding rate increases to individual local authorities.

On 19 September, we published the initial EYSG allocations for each local authority for 2023 to 2024 financial year.

3. Information: ESFA funded adult education budget funding rates and formula guide 2023 to 2024 version 2

We have published version 2 of the adult education budget (AEB) funding rates and formula guide for 2023 to 2024.

This document sets out how we will fund activity for ESFA funded AEB and continuing 16 to 18 traineeships. In this version, we have described:

• a change of rate to £336 for digital functional skills qualifications.

This guide covers delivery starting in the 2023 to 2024 funding year. We may publish further updates through the course of the year and we will tell you about any changes in ESFA Update.

If you have any queries after reading our guidance contact us, marking your query for the attention of the 19+ Calculations group.

4. Information: earnings adjustment statement (EAS)

We have published guidance for submitting the EAS in the 2023 to 2024 funding year.

This year’s version contains the following updates:

• new funding line types for the ESFA adult education budget (AEB) procurement for starts from August 2023
• updated funding line types for National Skills Fund provision
• details of what can be claimed through EAS for the updated apprenticeships care leaver bursary

You can now access published guidance and supporting documents, including a template CSV file and validation rules, to help you with your return.

5. Information: recording your T Level data accurately

We calculate T Levels under- and over-delivery against your estimated numbers by reviewing, in year, your student numbers submitted in your autumn census or R04. It is important your autumn census or R04 data is recorded correctly as we will not accept business cases to change these numbers.

We have updated the record your T Level data correctly guidance. This includes additional examples of how T Level programme elements and scenarios should be recorded in your data returns.

We strongly encourage you to submit your autumn school census or R04 before the return deadlines (1 November 2023 for the autumn census and 6 December 2023 for the R04) so you can review your data submitted and make amendments where needed. You can review your 16 to 19 funding reports in the funding information system (FIS), submit learner data and COLLECT as these will identify your T Level students and the funding bands assigned to them.

If some T Level students are not displaying as you expected, you can use the checklist provided at the bottom of the record your T Level data correctly guidance to ensure you have recorded all programme elements correctly.

6. Information: join these webinars on approved frameworks and see how you could save money for your school

Are you a school business professional who buys goods and services for your school?

The Schools Commercial team host regular webinars on how using DfE approved frameworks could help your school get value for money. Click on the links to find out more and book your place:

• Buying catering services for your school
• Buying energy efficiency measures for your school through ESPO
• Buying cleaning services for your school
• Buying synthetic sports facilities for your school

You can find the full programme of webinars for the autumn term on the Autumn 2023 webinar page. Visit the page to find out more and book your place.

7. Information: how Get help buying for schools helped me get the best cleaning services for my school

In our latest Buying for Schools blog post Zoe Allcott, a Business Manager at Thrive Education Partnership in the West Midlands, shares her experience of using Get help buying for schools to buy cleaning services for a school in the trust:

The fact that it exists, is free to use and helps us all to achieve our main objective - to ensure we have the best outcomes for our children – is brilliant. I would highly recommend it.

You can read Zoe’s blog post in full on GOV.UK.