ESFA Update further education: 3 April 2019
Published 3 April 2019
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2019
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/esfa-update-3-april-2019/esfa-update-further-education-3-april-2019
1. Action: request for feedback on new T Level outline content by Monday 8 April 2019
Thank you to providers who have provided feedback on T Level outline content for pathways within the construction, digital and legal, and finance and accounting routes, which will roll out in 2021 to 2022.
For providers who have yet to respond, we would encourage you to provide your feedback by completing this online survey. The survey closes on Monday 8 April 2019.
If you have questions of the team, please email Employer.Panels@education.gov.uk.
2. Action: Document Exchange Service feedback
We are in the process of developing the new Document Exchange Service within the Education and Skills Funding Service which will replace Information Exchange. We are also looking at the digital transformation of funding documentation, including the dedicated schools grant (DSG), general annual grant (GAG) and reconciliation statements.
We want to talk to a broad mix of customers in different roles and organisation types. Your feedback is really important in helping us make user centred improvements and prioritise future developments.
We are looking for volunteers to join us for an hour research session. We are flexible and can hold them over the phone, via web meeting, at your place of work or at our Coventry location.
To sign up, please complete the form which you would like to give feedback on:
3. Action: funding monitoring rules survey
As part of our funding rules monitoring review, we have launched a survey.
This survey gathers feedback about your experiences of the funding rules monitoring process and will influence future processes. The scope of the survey includes documentation we publish, the reports on the Hub and the data within the reports.
The survey closes at 5pm on Wednesday 15 May 2019.
For further information about funding rules monitoring, please refer to the ESFA financial assurance: monitoring the funding rules.
4. Reminder: reporting your gender pay gap figures
The statutory deadline for reporting your gender pay gap figures for the 2018 to 2019 reporting year was Saturday 30 March 2019.
For trusts with 250 or more employees, please register with the government’s gender pay gap reporting service as soon as possible and upload your figures. Guidance on reporting your figures is available.
If you have previously registered to report but now do not think you are in scope of the regulations for this reporting year, please change your status on the reporting service by logging onto the reporting service.
Please do this as soon as possible to ensure government records are accurate and to avoid any potential enforcement action for non-compliance.
5. Information: payment reports and remittance advice feedback
We are looking for volunteers to inform our research into the payments reports and remittance advice that ESFA publishes for schools, colleges and other providers.
If you are interested in taking part in any of the pre-release trials for upcoming releases, please email our User Researcher.
6. Information: Advanced Learner Loans – launch of the 2019 to 2020 application service
The 2019 to 2020 Advanced Learner Loans application service will be available from Monday 13 May 2019 for learners who wish to start eligible qualifications from 1 August 2019 funded with a loan.
7. Information: new Advanced Learner Loans funding letter templates
We have updated the learning and funding information letters for 2019 to 2020. You must issue these to learners, including for offenders in custody, who are considering funding their qualification with a loan. We have also published guidance on how to complete the letters.
8. Information: college oversight – support and intervention
The Department for Education (DfE) have published the college oversight: support and intervention policy paper. This document sets out the government’s strengthened approach to supporting and intervening in colleges to improve financial resilience and quality.
It explains how we will work with colleges to identify financial and quality issues early and to give them access to support and advice to help tackle those problems.
The strengthened regime includes:
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extended triggers for early and formal intervention
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a strengthened role for the FE Commissioner to review provision in a local area
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introduction of the statutory college insolvency regime to ensure there is legal clarity and protection for current learners in the event of a college failing
We would encourage all college leaders, governors and finance staff to read this document and to act early if they see problems ahead.
9. Information: ESFA oversight of Independent Training Providers
We have published our strengthened oversight of independent training providers (ITPs) operational guidance, which aims to eradicate low quality training provision, protect learners and public funds.
If you have any questions about the guidance, please speak with your provider manager.
10. Information: apprenticeships off-the-job training guidance, commitment statement template and survey
On Friday 22 March we published version 2 of the off-the-job training guide and a compliant commitment statement template.
It was brought to our attention that there was an error in paragraph 69 of the guide. We have reviewed this text, updated the documents accordingly on the off-the-job training page and apologise for any confusion.
To help us understand the availability of off-the-job training information and how the policy is working in practice, we encourage you to complete this short survey by Friday 12 April 2019.
11. Information: new individualised learner record (ILR) processes
Following feedback from ESFA funded training and educational institutions about the complexity of the ILR dataset and the visibility of our decision-making around changes to it, we are rolling out improved new processes.
The revised processes will deliver a more consultative approach, ensuring training and educational institutions are represented in our change planning and decisions. We will also release regular updates to the community on our change activities.
Additionally, we will use the new processes to review the data we are already collecting and over time refining and reducing the dataset size by streamlining or removing data where we can.
Our next steps are to run webinars for the education and training institutions to present changes to the 2019 to 2020 dataset. More details will be released via Inform and Update.
More information on progress of the implementation of the new processes will be released - along with the list of proposed changes for 2020 to 2021 - in the autumn.
12. Information: new data reporting portal ‘View Your Education Data’ to replace Birst BI
We are creating a brand new service to share data reports with you. We will release a beta version of the View Your Education Data service in the week commencing Monday 22 April 2019.
The View Your Education Data portal replaces the Birst (My BI) service that was previously accessed through the BI Tools tab on the Hub. We will share details about how to access the new portal closer to the launch date.
The first product we are releasing through the portal will be the qualification achievement rates (QARs) 2017 to 2018 dashboard. The dashboard will contain the same data as your 2017 to 2018 final QARs.