Correspondence

ESFA Update local authorities: 25 September 2019

Published 25 September 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This correspondence was withdrawn on 21 December 2020

This has been withdrawn as it’s out of date.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. Information: ESFA adult education budget (AEB) funding and performance management rules 2019 to 2020

This week we have published the adult education budget (AEB) funding and performance management rules 2019 to 2020.

The rules apply to all providers of education and training who receive AEB funding from the ESFA.

We have made changes since it was published in June, these are set out in the summary of changes section.

If you have any queries, please contact us through our Business Operations Service Desk at SDE.servicedesk@education.gov.uk.

2. Information: support for financial planning

The Department for Education has launched a suite of resources to support schools implementing integrated curriculum and financial planning (ICFP).

This has summaries of the common features of ICFP for trust leaders, governors and business managers. It also includes examples of best practice and free-to-download practical resources.

We have also updated the financial advice for schools service, which now includes providers who can provide face-to-face consultancy support and access to ICFP tools.

3. Information: buying for schools service

We’ve made it easier for you to find the right deal for your school with the buying for schools service. A new find a DfE-approved framework will help you to find the right deal for your school quickly and easily. It has advice and guidance on buying all together, making it easier to find what you need.

Buying for schools includes a new education technology deal as part of the suite of recommended deals.

Designed specifically for the education sector, the education technology deal offers a whole spectrum of IT requirements from small orders for hardware to broadband services, audio visual and IT solutions.

4. Information: schools causing concern guidance

The Department for Education has updated the schools causing concern guidance, which sets out how regional schools commissioners and local authorities may use their powers of intervention in schools and academies.

The update does not introduce any new policy that has not been publicly announced. It is to make the information easier to use and understand and to best reflect current policy. We have:

• brought the guidance in line with the most recent department policies including removing references to coasting and floor standards.
• added information about how the school support offer will work in 2019 to 2020.
• changed the guidance structure to avoid confusion between the academy and maintained school intervention frameworks and added a chapter called “academies causing concern”.
• included a new chapter on pupil referral unit intervention that was previously contained in a separate document.
• added a subsection to explain terminology.

5. Information: Updated pupil premium allocations for 2019 to 2020

We have updated the published pupil premium allocations for 2019 to 2020, to reflect quarter 2 payments.

6. Information: Qualification achievement rates (QARs) monitoring

We will be contacting a small number of providers about potential data issues that affect their 2018 to 2019 QARs. This is part of our on-going assurance work to build on and further strengthen our oversight procedures and to support you in submitting accurate individualised learner record (ILR) data by the final R14 deadline on 17 October 2019.

If this affects you, we will share the monitoring reports directly with you shortly and with your territorial manager. The reports are not available on the hub.

To ensure your QAR is accurate, you can also review the common issues article, this document highlights some of the main areas providers struggle with and some actions you can take to rectify any issues. There are also certain funding monitoring reports that affect QARs that you can use to review and correct data.

7. Reminder: Autumn school census is approaching

The autumn school census 2019 opens on Thursday 3 October. You need to submit your information by Wednesday 30 October. These user reports explain how to use COLLECT.

A ‘beta’ release of the 2019 autumn school census live COLLECT blade is available. You should take this opportunity to load a file output from your management information system (MIS) into COLLECT before Friday 27 September at 4pm.

This will allow you to check all the required data has inputted correctly from the file output from your MIS into the autumn census return. Also allows you to check whether any validation errors or queries are generated against your data when loaded into COLLECT. These will need to be resolved before the collection goes live. For schools seeing COLLECT for the first time it will allow you to become familiar with the COLLECT database.

Our interactive post-16 census tool helps you return accurate 16 to 19 data. We will publish our usual suite of 16 to 19 funding reports in COLLECT along with user guides by the end of September.

DfE have recently been working to improve the school census guide following feedback from schools and local authorities. Following a full review, the 2019 to 2020 census guide has been replaced with a web based manual.

8. Reminder: Sustainability Award

Last chance to put yourself forward for the Department for Education’s Sustainability Award, sponsored by Engie. Entries close on Friday 27 September.

This award is to be given to the school that demonstrates an innovative and impactful sustainability programme. The department wants to identify and share best practice across the education community. There will be a £2,500 reward for the winning school.

In order to be considered for this award, please include examples of policies that have been set up, the positive (or negative and how this was resolved) outcomes and how you have engaged the pupils and community to take these beyond the school day.

You can submit your entry here.