Inform February 2020
Updated 18 January 2022
Applies to England
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1. For action: Mid-Year funding claims for 2019 to 2020
You must submit a mid-year funding claim by 5pm on Thursday 13 February 2020 on Submit learner data.
You will therefore need to submit a claim if you receive funds through:
- Adult Education Budget (AEB) (Adult Skills, 19-24 Traineeships and Community Learning) – grant-funded
- Learner Support for AEB Procured (Adult Skills and 19-24 Traineeships) – paid-on-profile
- Advanced Learner Loans Bursary (ALLB) – grant-funded
The form will include your R06 ILR and EAS data and will be available from 9am on Monday 10 February 2020. You must include your forecasts for the remainder of 2019 to 2020 funding year.
Once you have submitted your mid-year funding claim on Submit learner data, you will also be able to view it on Manage your education and skills funding.
You will not be able to complete the form after the deadline on Thursday 13 February 2020 and failure to submit the form will be a breach of your agreement.
The funding claims guidance for 2019 to 2020 funding year can be found on GOV.UK, along with the user guide to help you complete the form.
For colleges due to submit the Integrated Financial Model for Colleges (IFMC) at the end of February, please ensure figures in the mid-year claim are used to inform the financial planning you are currently undertaking.
If you have any queries about this please contact your territorial manager.
2. Information: Summary of changes to the ILR for 2020 to 2021
Thank you to those who responded on feconnect to our proposed changes to the ILR for 2020 to 2021. We can now confirm the changes taken forward.
2.1 Apprenticeships
A mandatory field has been added to collect Off the Job Training Hours – Actual data at the end of the programme.
This is to address the National Audit Office recommendation to monitor actual off the job training provision.
2.2 T-Levels
Two new programme types have been added to identify T-Level and T-Level transition programmes. T-Level planned hours will also be collected in the existing Planned Hours field.
This is to collect learner data on delivery of T-Levels and provide monitoring to inform funding levels and achievement rates.
2.3 Single Learner / Single Provider rule (V59)
The rule is now mandatory, ensuring each learner is returned only once by a provider.
This is to ensure duplicate records are excluded from the dataset, improving overall data quality.
2.4 Devolution
The number of Devolved Area Monitoring codes (DAM: used to monitor and fund Devolved Authorities’ provision against a learning aim) has been increased from 4 to 6.
This is to provide the Devolved Authorities with more options for their requirements.
2.5 Agreement Identifier
This field has been removed as it fails to resolve mismatches between the data held in the ILR return and the Apprenticeship Service account.
Its removal contributes to our aim to reduce the quantity of data we collect and to increase the overall data quality.
Housekeeping Changes Some fields and values have been removed (details listed in Summary of Changes page in the ILR specification).
Removal of these fields contributes to our aim to reduce the quantity of data we collect and to increase the overall data quality.
3. Information: Return period 5 (R05)
In total in R05, we processed 3,618 files from 1,496 providers. We also had over 3750 files which were uploaded for validation only
Lots of providers are leaving their submissions until the last minute. This is a risky approach as you must have a submission with us by the deadline to guarantee your payments.
Over 555 providers submitted their first R05 file within the final 3 days of the R05 collection window, 179 of these submitted their first R05 file on the final day.
4. For action: Individualised Learner Record (ILR): R06 for 2019 to 2020
The ILR R06 data collection for 2019 to 2020 is open and will close at 6pm on Thursday 6th February.
As always, we recommend that you submit your data as early as possible and that you review your validation and funding reports that are made available to you on Submit learner data.
5. For information: ILR specification for 2020 to 2021 Public Beta
For 2020 to 2021 we are introducing our new online ILR product which can be accessed from the following location:
https://guidance.submitlearnerdatabeta.fasst.org.uk/
This new site will contain all ILR related material going forward and link back to previous years publications. The ILR specification is the first document to be implemented as online content, all other ILR material where applicable will gradually follow suit throughout the year.
We will be publishing an ‘Introduction to the new ILR’ on the above link in due course which will cover the offline functionality and further information on how to use the site to its fullest potential.
The ILR summary of changes will give a complete detailed view of the changes implemented for 2020 to 2021. A brief overview of the changes is below:
The ILR specification states that there should be one learner record for each learner, this has now been changed there must be one learner record for each learner. This will be enforced in validation for 2020 to 2021.
A new field has been added to collect Actual Hours for Off the Job Training at the end of the programme.
Two new programme types have been added to identify T-Level and T-Level transition programmes. T-Level planned hours will also be collected in the existing Planned Hours field.
The number of Devolved Area Monitoring codes has been increased from 4 to 6.
The Agreement Identifier field has been removed.
A number of redundant Funding and monitoring types and codes have been removed (details in the ILR summary of changes).
Please use the feedback link on the site to help us improve the functionality. On the introduction page, we will be posting our functionality backlog and will edit it as we progress through it.
6. Information: ESFA meeting for new data staff
The Customer Experience team wants to hear from data staff who are relatively new to the sector and interested in discussing their experiences with ESFA staff.
We want to invite some training providers to our offices in Coventry to meet with a range of ESFA teams and feedback on possible improvements.
Subjects and services we would expect to discuss include:
- Submit learner data and FIS team
- Apprenticeship service
- ILR specification team
- View your education data
- Audit
- funding and monitoring reports
- service desk
The meeting date will be Monday 17 February 2020.
Places will be limited. If you are interested, email customer.experience@education.gov.uk for further details.
Please include:
- which training provider you work for
- your role
- how long you’ve been in the FE sector