Correspondence

ESFA Update academies: 8 May 2024

Published 8 May 2024

Applies to England

Action: Use your 16 to 19 tuition funding before the end of the 2023 to 2024 academic year

You have until the end of the 2023 to 2024 academic year to spend your 16 to 19 tuition fund allocation. The Department for Education (DfE) has confirmed that this is the final year for this funding. 

As in previous years, the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) will review the end of year spend and recover any unspent funding. Refer to our guidance for a full list of eligible activities and spend. We have added summer schools to the list of eligible activities in section 7.4.

Action: Prepare to submit your year-end statement   

As we approach the end of the fourth and final year of the national tutoring programme (NTP), all organisations that received a 2023 to 2024 allocation should prepare to submit a year-end statement in September 2024. 

To help you prepare, we encourage you to download our calculator tool to plan and track your tutoring. Watch the video below for a quick demonstration of how to use the calculator tool.

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Make sure that your contact email address on get information about schools is correct, as we will use this to email you important information about any funding recoveries. 

Information: ESFA 16 to 19 Bursary Fund and Care to Learn guides for 2024 to 2025

Our student financial support scheme guides set out the funding rules for the different schemes. We review and update them annually and we have recently published the guides for the 2024 to 2025 academic year for: 

• 16 to 19 Bursary Fund
• Care to Learn

Review the updated guides and remind yourself of the funding rules which apply to each scheme to ensure that you understand them, and that your processes and documentation comply with them, including audit requirements. 

For the Bursary Fund, we would like to highlight 2 key points:  

1. You must assess the needs of all individual students when you award funding. This means you must award each student support based on their actual participation needs, not make flat or fixed rate payments to students that do not reflect the actual costs they face

2. You cannot carry forward bursary funding for more than one year. For the academic year 2024 to 2025, that means you must tell us the total amount of any unspent funds (not previously reported) from any year up to and including the 2022 to 2023 academic year.

Information: Payments for Care to Learn and 16 to 19 Bursary Fund 

ESFA has published data showing aggregate payments made to childcare providers and education institutions, for both Care to Learn and the 16 to 19 Bursary Fund for students in defined vulnerable groups. The data will show payments made from Thursday 1 September 2022 through to Thursday 31 August 2023. 

The Care to Learn scheme helps young parents (aged 20 years and under) to continue in education after the birth of a child. ESFA provides funding towards childcare and travel costs whilst the young parent is engaged in a study programme. The 16 to 19 Bursary Fund provides financial support to help care leavers, students in care, or in receipt of specific benefits, to remain in education. 

Information: 2024 to 2025 new wave 4 T Levels

In February, ESFA published the indicative funding bands for the 2024 to 2025 new wave 4 T Levels. These funding bands have now been confirmed as correct, and therefore there is no change. 

You can find the funding bands and further information in the 2024 to 2025 T Levels funding guide on GOV.UK.  

Information: Buying for Schools – new blog posts on social value and Transforming Public Procurement

The Buying for Schools blog is run by DfE’s schools commercial team. We’re here to support people who buy for schools and trusts, in particular complex buying such as energy, Information Communication Technology (ICT), catering and cleaning.  

In our latest blog post, Kevin Draisey, Head of Procurement Operations for Get help buying for schools, updates on the new transforming public procurement (TPP) e-learning now available for procurement practitioners in schools and multi-academy trusts. 

You can also find Stacey Speakman’s blog post on social value. Stacey is a Commercial Lead for Get help buying for schools, the DfE’s free procurement service for schools and trusts, and in her recent blog post Stacey explains what social value is and how schools and trusts can benefit from it.