Correspondence

ESFA Update further education: 31 August 2022

Published 31 August 2022

This correspondence was withdrawn on 27 December 2023

This has been withdrawn as it’s out of date. Read the latest editions of ESFA Update for the latest news and information.

Applies to England

1. Action: Review your R12 in-year qualification achievement rate

It is important that providers continue to review the in-year QAR dashboards for 2021 to 2022 available via the View Your Education Data portal.

These provide indicative QARs for apprenticeships, education and training and traineeships and will shortly be updated to reflect R12 data.

This is an opportunity to identify and resolve any potential data issues prior to the ILR R14 hard close on 20 October 2022.

The QAR 2021 to 2022 guidance provides support based on common data issues that can arise.

Alongside the dashboard, we also provide data extracts to show achievement rates, pass rates and retention rates to match those in the QAR dashboard.

The data extracts identify the learners expected to complete, or that completed, over the multiple funding years used to produce the QAR dataset for 2021 to 2022.

1.1 Further support

Download and complete the query form at the bottom of the QAR guidance page, referencing the data from the data extracts, then submit this via our enquiry page, selecting the QAR ‘query type’.

2. Information: over 4.6million GCSE results added to Learning records service

Our Learning records service (LRS) gives training providers access to a learner’s achievement data. Access to it makes enrolment processes easier and helps providers to give good education/career information, advice and guidance. Providers tell us that this data needs to be available on or around exam results days.

Awarding organisations uploaded all of the general qualification results we would expect for this period within 48 hours of the results being released to learners. The LRS makes the data available to providers around 30 minutes after receiving it from awarding organisations.

By Tuesday 30 August, the LRS had over 4.6 million GCSE results, and approximately 785k A/AS-level results. We are grateful to awarding organisations for promptly uploading achievement data to the LRS and hope this has supported your enrolment processes this year.

Further details are available in ESFA Communities. If you have any queries regarding the LRS, there are LRS guidance documents on GOV.UK or you can contact the LRS for help and advice.

3. Information: update to view your education data (VYED)

The VYED dashboard has been updated to include data from the 2022 college financial forecasting return (CFFR) submission. In addition, we have introduced several changes to aid visual interpretation of data including:

• financial health information is now in a single table and graphs are at the bottom of the page
• the legend explaining the categories on the income charts has been repositioned to aid visibility

The VYED service enables the exploration of the financial information submitted by your organisation, which can help making analytical insights and inform decision making.

To access please visit VYED.

The version you use will determine the collection year ( < Year > ) and file name (ILR - LLLLLLLL - YYYY - yyyymmdd - hhmmss - NN . XML) that are generated during the export process. If these fields are incorrect, the ILR file will fail data validation.

If you have any questions about VYED or college financial reporting and forecasting, please contact us using the ESFA enquiry form.

4. Information: Learner Entry Tool

During the ILR dual returns period, please ensure you are exporting and uploading ILR data using the correct Learner Entry Tool.

Files for 2021 to 2022 (R13 and R14) should be exported from the 2122.2 version. Files for 2022 to 2023 (R01, R02, etc.) should be exported from the 2223.1 version.

Updated version can be found at the ILR Learner entry tool page on Submit Learner Data.

5. Information: higher education learning aim requests

The deadline for submitting new higher education learning aim requests for the 2021 to 2022 academic year is Friday 23 September 2022.

Requests made after this date will not be available for your final R14 (2021 to 2022) ILR data submission.

Higher education learning aim request due date explains how to submit a request for a new learning aim to be added to Find a learning aim.

6. Information: get advice on addressing and responding to harmful sexual behaviour

The Harmful Sexual Behaviour Support Service can be contacted by any safeguarding professional in England who may encounter developmentally inappropriate sexual behaviour among the children and young people they work with, and want help and support with how to respond to individual incidents or to discuss wider policy questions.

The Support service can be contacted Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm on 0344 225 0623, or hsbsupport@swgfl.org.uk.

Find out more on the Harmful Sexual Behaviour Support Service website.

The service has been in operation since January 2022, and run by South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL) and the Marie Collins Foundation, funded by the UK Government Home Office.

The Support Service is coming to a close on 28 October 2022. We encourage professionals to continue to engage with the service to receive support until this time. Further resources will continue to be available after the end of the Support Service.

7. Your feedback: DfE consultation on FE funding and accountability reform

A reminder that the consultation on implementing a new FE funding and accountability system is still live and can be accessed online, where you can also find the link to submit an online response.

The consultation closes at 23:55 on 21 September.

We are hosting a webinar on Tuesday 6 September at 10am, where there will the opportunity to hear an overview of the proposals and to ask questions. You can register for the webinar on MS Teams.