Turing Scheme: apply for funding for international placements
Information on applying for funding for international study and work placements for schools, further education providers and higher education providers.
Applications for the Turing Scheme for the 2024 to 2025 academic year are closed.
The Turing Scheme provides grant funding to education providers to support their students to pursue study and work placements around the world.
Funding is open to UK and British overseas territories organisations from across the education and training sector, including schools and further and higher education providers.
This funding allows education providers to give their students the chance to develop new skills, gain international experience and boost their employability. Providers can apply for funding for students going to multiple destinations, as part of a single application.
Students cannot apply directly to the Department for Education (DfE) for Turing Scheme funding. If you are a student who is interested in studying or working abroad, contact your education provider.
There is more information on funding and eligibility for the Turing Scheme.
Applying for funding
Applications for the 2024 to 2025 academic year closed on Thursday 21 March 2024.
Independent assessors review and score all applications. We will communicate results to applicants in June 2024.
Schools and further education providers can apply as part of a consortium partnership. All education providers in consortium projects should be named in the application.
If you are applying for funding across 2 sectors, you will need to submit applications for the different routes separately.
Once you submit your application, it will undergo:
- an eligibility and financial capability check to verify that you are compliant with the Turing Scheme eligibility criteria
- an assessment to evaluate the extent to which the application meets the Turing Scheme assessment criteria, including supporting students from disadvantaged backgrounds and project deliverability
DfE is under no obligation to accept any application or make an award of funding. You are not eligible for funding towards any costs you incur in developing or submitting your application.
You must ensure that your projects follow the safeguarding requirements that apply to you in your jurisdiction and that of the placement destination.
If you have any questions about applying, contact us.
Assessment criteria
The assessment criteria for the 2024 to 2025 academic year reflect the latest Turing Scheme purpose and aims.
Applications are scored against these criteria.
We use assessment scores to prioritise funding. This means that applicants who score highly are more likely to be allocated the funding they have requested. This is subject to the overall quality of the applications received, and the level of demand for funding.
Applications should include an overview of your project instead of each placement.
A placement refers to the study or work activity that you are organising for a student or group of students at a single destination. A project refers to your overall application, including all placements that you wish to facilitate for the 2024 to 2025 academic year.
Assessment questions
In your application, you need to provide information relating to the assessment criteria.
Project vision (weighting: 10%)
Summarise your proposed Turing Scheme project, specifically setting out how it will meet the Turing Scheme aims.
Enhancing skills (weighting: 30%)
Explain who your Turing Scheme students are, what education or employment outcomes they will gain and how these link to the destination students will visit.
Tell us how you will measure the impact of your Turing Scheme student placements.
Advancing social justice (weighting: 30%)
Outline, using data where possible:
- your organisation’s overall demographics including students who are disadvantaged, from underrepresented groups and those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), including those with additional learning needs (ALN) in Wales and people with additional support needs (ASN) in Scotland
- how you will recruit and support students from disadvantaged backgrounds
- how you will recruit and support students with SEND
- how you will recruit and support students from underrepresented groups
Delivery plan (weighting: 30%)
Set out a delivery plan that includes:
- timings – a summary of the main activities to deliver your placements and their timings
- risks and issues – project risks, mitigations and how you will manage any issues that arise
- roles, responsibilities and governance – who will work on the project, and your project governance arrangements, including any consortium arrangements
- assurance arrangements – your processes to ensure value for money and prevent fraud and error
You will also need to provide a breakdown of costs, including setting out how you will use organisational support funding.
Supplementary questions
There are 2 optional questions worth 1% each, which will be added to your total score from other questions.
Environmental impact
Outline any placements with a focus on mitigating the effects of climate change, specifically in relation to rewilding, conservation and green skills.
Apprentices
Outline how you will support apprentices, where applicable, to participate in the Turing Scheme.
Assessment scoring and funding allocation
Applications will be scored against the criteria by independent assessors. Assessors can only score based on the information that is contained within the application, and will not consider any other information.
Financial capability and due diligence checks
When you apply, we will ask you to summarise your processes to ensure value for money and prevent fraud and error.
In compliance with the guidance on managing public money and the Government Functional Standard for grants, DfE will verify whether your organisation has the necessary financial and delivery capability to meet the conditions of the grant by conducting mandatory due diligence checks, in proportion to the size of the grant and risk.
For education providers, these include confirming:
- eligibility, through checks with regulators and government funding bodies
- financial viability, through checks of recent financial health assessments and inspections by regulators or government funding bodies – we may request further documents
For other types of organisations acting as consortium leads, these checks include:
- eligibility checks to confirm status for non-profit, membership organisations which represent education providers
- financial viability checks of accounts or bank statements, credit agencies, financial procedures, and controls to confirm financial stability
- for non-profit membership organisations, evidence of a proper membership structure
For all organisations, we may check:
- their legal status via Companies House, Charity Commission or equivalent
- the grant to revenue ratio, considering the extent of your reliance on grant and other government funding, and whether the value is appropriate for the outcome delivered and size of your organisation
- your financial history to confirm that your organisation is not operating in a pattern of unmanageable annual losses
- your governance, including checks of ultimate beneficial owners, linked companies and directors or trustees, where relevant
- operations, to confirm there are adequate internal, fiscal, and administrative controls, and that your organisation has capacity to deliver, including previous performance when managing public money
- whether you have any outstanding activities relating to previous rounds of Turing Scheme grant funds
- security for risks to national security for example, overseas ownership, financing or linked entities
We may request further evidence and documents from you, such as audited accounts or bank statements, from you to support these checks. We reserve the right to decline an applicant based on these checks.
If your application is successful
We will let you know whether you have been successful with your application by email in June 2024. A full list of successful applicants will be published after that.
If your application is approved, we will send you a grant funding agreement which you will need to sign before any funds can be released. The grant funding agreement is a legally binding document outlining the roles, responsibilities, terms and conditions that you need to follow in order to receive funds.
You will receive further information on payment processes, reporting and assurance requirements and timelines before grant funding agreements are signed.
Appeals
If you are unhappy with the outcome of the application assessment, you have the right to appeal the decision. The appeals window will open after we have shared the results.
Updates to this page
Published 4 January 2024Last updated 22 March 2024 + show all updates
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Applications for the 2024 to 2025 academic year of the scheme are now closed.
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Added Welsh version of the guidance now applications are open for the 2024 to 2025 academic year. The grant calculator has also been updated.
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Updated the 'Turing Scheme: apply for funding for international placements' page to reflect current Turing Scheme dates and processes. Added links to the assessment questions and grant calculator. Temporarily removed Welsh language version to be updated.
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Added Welsh language version of the guidance.
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First published.