Qualifications with removed funding approval
Why and when we have removed or will remove funding approval for groups of qualifications.
The Department for Education is running a focused review of the post-16 qualification reforms at level 3 and below.
To allow space for this review, we will place a one year pause on the removal of 16 to 19 funding from qualifications assessed as overlapping with T Levels in:
- construction and the built environment
- digital
- education and early years
- health and science
These qualifications were originally scheduled to have their funding approval removed in the 16 to 19 offer after 31 July 2024.
Our public funding update for qualifications that overlap with T Levels in waves 1 and 2 confirms which qualifications on the final waves 1 and 2 T Level overlap list have:
- been approved for funding in 2024 to 2025, and have had their funding approval extended to 31 July 2025 - or before if the awarding organisation has set an operational end date before this date
- not had their funding approval extended into 2024 to 2025, as the qualification was not approved for funding in 2023 to 2024 or is not operational in 2024 to 2025
These funding approval extensions were:
- published on our list of qualifications approved for funding on 13 August 2024
- updated on ESFA’s Find a Learning Aim on 12 September 2024
Some qualifications are scheduled to have funding approval removed for new starts from 1 August 2025. This applies to qualifications on both the:
- final list of qualifications overlapping with T Levels in wave 3
- provisional list of qualifications overlapping with T Levels in wave 4
We will continue not to approve funding qualifications that have the same or similar content to qualifications on these lists during the focused review.
We will update this section of the manual if we need to, after the focused review.
We removed funding approval from the qualifications on the list of qualifications with no and low publicly funded enrolments for removal of funding approval from 1 August 2022.
We removed funding approval from some ICT and digital qualifications on 1 August 2021, 1 August 2022 and 1 August 2023.
In August 2021, we removed funding approval for students aged 16 and over from a published list of entry level and level 1 digital qualifications.
In August 2022, we removed funding approval from:
- all level 2 functional skills qualifications for ICT and level 2 ICT for users qualifications, except for essential digital skills qualifications
- any other ICT and digital skills qualification in other SSAs, where the purpose of the qualification was not linked to a specific occupation or specific entry level job role
In August 2023, we removed funding approval from functional skills qualifications in ICT at entry level and level 1. They were replaced by new digital functional skills qualifications at entry and level 1.
We remove funding approval for new starts only.
If a student is already enrolled on an existing qualification before its funding approval end date, we continue to fund them. This will be until they have completed their qualification or until the qualification’s certification end date, whichever is earlier.
Where we remove funding approval for a qualification, that qualification cannot re-enter the publicly funded offer.
We will not approve new qualifications that have the same or similar content to qualifications where funding approval has already been withdrawn.
This will continue to apply during the focused review. It will still apply to qualifications that were in scope to have their funding approval removed, but have since had their funding approval extended.
If you withdraw a qualification or change its operational end date to be earlier, we will set its funding approval end date to be the same as the revised operational end date.