Concerns have emerged at the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) that FE and skills providers may have been claiming funding they weren’t entitled to.

Una Bennett, SFA deputy director for funding systems, has written to providers about the ILR funding codes used for learners aged 24 and above after a review uncovered full funding claims below level three, where most provision is co-funded.

An SFA spokesperson told FE Week: “Following the review of data submitted to us for provision at entry level, level one and level two for learners aged 24 and over, we have identified a number of cases where providers are claiming full funding for a learner, but it is not clear from the data that the learner has an entitlement to full funding.

“There may be a number of reasons for this and the learner may in fact be entitled to full funding. We have asked providers to review their data and ensure it reflects the information held in learning agreements, correcting where necessary, and asking them to contact us if they need further advice and support.”

Full funding can be claimed for a 24+ learner in several circumstances below level three and they are outlined in the SFA’s Funding Rules 2013/14, page 109, points 41.4 to 41.7.

The SFA spokesperson said these circumstances were where the full funding entitlement applied to any eligible learner aged 19 or older (usually in a particular identified group), rather than being a rule specifically for a 24+ learner.

The circumstances include learners who need help to move into work, progress in work or remove a barrier to getting into work and who are receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA); receiving Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and are in the work-related activity group (WRAG); receiving Universal Credit because they are unemployed, and who are mandated (required) to undertake skills training; or, in custody who are released on temporary licence (RoTL) following learning outside a prison environment and not funded through Olass (Offender Learning and Skills Service).

It also includes individuals who are unemployed and receiving any state benefits not listed above but who want to enter employment and believe skills training will help them to do so. This includes individuals receiving Universal Credit who are not mandated (required) to undertake skills training.

Outside of these, 24+ learners can be only be co-funded for other listed learning aims up to and including level two.

Stephen Hewitt, Morley College’s strategic funding, enrolments and examinations manager, said: “It seems odd the SFA is contacting individual providers about this when no clear rule-breaking is taking place.

“There are, as the SFA states, a large number of reasons where learners over 24 should be in receipt of full funding and all the providers I’ve been in touch with have had to exert additional effort to prove they are doing the right thing over and above any other data requests or their own data checks.

“Everyone I’ve discussed this with has understood the rules and applied them to their learners correctly. I’ve heard of no great outcry from auditors about this issue.  Of course, the reason SFA can’t tell why this cohort of learners are being fully funded is because they removed the field ‘Reason for Fee Remission’ from the ILR four or five years ago because they claimed they didn’t need to know, so it’s rather ironic that they’re now asking providers to check this status in particular.”

The SFA spokesperson said:  “We do not have any plans to bring back the ‘Reason for Fee Remission’ field. This field was removed as it was not required for funding processes.

“Providers should review their data to ensure it reflects the information held in their learning agreements and that their learners are eligible for all funding, as per the agency’s Funding Rules.  Providers can contact the agency directly should they require any further support or guidance.”

Your thoughts

Leave a Reply to Steve Hewitt Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

6 Comments

  1. Country Bumpkin

    One point for clarity – The SFA comments in the article that “We have asked providers to review their data and ensure it reflects the information held in learning agreements, correcting where necessary, and asking them to contact us if they need further advice and support.”

    When in fact the standard letter required all providers to confirm their reasons after reviewing their data “If any learning aims are still recorded as being fully-funded once you have reviewed your data, we ask that you contact us to confirm your reasons for claiming full funding for these learners.”

    The two sentences are not quite the same.

    Surely the real story is what prompted these concerns and how many (if any) providers have been claiming incorrectly.

  2. I was gobsmacked when we received the letter. We spend a lot of time on checking data to ensure its accurate. I think what I found frustrating most was the letter said there were over 100 possible errors, but then not actually give any details on who those errors belonged to. Surely if someone had been looking at the data, they could have supplied the ILR Ref numbers at least.

    The PDSAT report they referred to only gave a volume, and not learner record details either. I ended up manually trawling through over 2,000 records checking the Full/Co-funding eligibility, and apart from a handful of minor errors where the benefit wasn’t recorded, I found no other evidence of these errors. The fully funded Leaners were either on English/Maths courses, or were Unemployed and claiming benefits.

    Why is there no Validation Rule built into FIS to identify learners who do not meet the criteria for Fully Funding?

  3. Strange response from the SFA there. What is this request if not part of the funding process? Either there are Freedoms & Flexibilities (backed up by audit, of course), or there aren’t. If the SFA want to treat us like naughty ten year olds who haven’t done their homework, that’s up to them, but it’s a rather regressive step I’d say? As the commentor above points out, providers were asked to feedback with WHY they had “so many” FF 24+, not just check to make sure they’d done it right…
    .
    This is the sort of spurious data request I’d have sent straight to the Data Service [wistful sigh]

  4. I asked for the supporting data to check who, why and how accurate the coding was. I then received an email from Data&MI requesting that I do the following:

    “In order for us to assist you we will require you to complete a Data Sharing Agreement which we attach for your completion.” – this is the most unwieldy 10 page form (still branded YPLA) asking for chapter and verse on data compliance, data protection, DP registration No, renewal date, etc. etc.

    I only want to see the data so we can interrogate their claims. Why couldn’t they just provide us with the data? We don’t need names just ULN or student ref no’s.

  5. Bring back fee remission reasons/categories in the ILR then this request would not be asked for. We still collect them to enable validation to take place. We had no errors on any of our 500+ 24+ fully funded learners.

  6. And why on earth are they doing a Webinar to clarify the ILR codings for 13/14 on the 17th September, 2 days after we have to submit the ILR data for the Year End claim?