Countdown to F05, ER04 and Xmas!
November 17, 2010 in The information authority Blog by fazia
Good afternoon on this wet and windy day, the frost is here and we’ll be snowed in soon, so make sure you have started to submit data for your F05 return in the lead up to the hard close date of 22 November. We wouldn’t want adverse weather conditions to impact your F05 submission, as it did for some providers last year. Be prepared….five days and counting to the hard close!
Speaking of hard close dates, the W13 return closed on 12 November and we can report this as a great success with almost a 100% succesful return rate. Well done and we look forward to reporting a similar success for F05 next week.
As you may be aware, the information authority is proposing a move to single, restructured learner data collection defined and collected using Extensible Markup Language (XML). We are now starting a more detailed consultation with software writers and software suppliers in the first instance to assess financial and technical implications.
We would also like to remind providers that the hard close for ER04 is 06 December and the completion of the Employer Identifier (field A44) and the inclusion of a valid and separate Unique Learner Number (ULN) for each learner is a compulsory requirement for this return. Get it in! Get it right!
The Skills Funding Agency recently published a revised guidance and information document on the Qualification journey from the National Database of Accredited Provision (NDAQ) to publication on the Learning Aim Database (LAD) for post 19 funding. The Young People’s Learning Agency (YPLA) have also just published an update on the Qualifications Approval for 16-18 funding in relation to Section 96.
There are now 5 days til F05 closes, 19 days til ER04 closes and 37 days til xmas – important dates for your diary!
Enjoy the rest of your week and we look forward to receiving your F05 ILR returns.
there is also the small matter of the LR01 return, with the same deadline day as ER04
I suspect there may be an impact on the accuracy and completeness of the LR01 return this year, caused by the earlier return date for F05. In previous years, we have concentrated mainly on the F01 data during October and November since we had the extra few weeks to finish off F05.
This year however we now have only a few days to switch our full attention to the LR01 data, which is critical to the 2011/12 allocation process. I’d be interested if other providers find themselves in the same position.
Chris
Ho hum!
My personal one of note is 33 days til I retire.
We’ve known about the hard close of F05 for some time and been watching it carefully.
The big problem isn’t the learner numbers thing, it’s the sheer lack of funding. We’ve been growing rapidly for the last few years, doing miracles with funding. This year our Governors said that we should slow down and wait for the funding to catch up. It now seems that the funding will be cut once more – we will get the numbers we’ve been achieving but not the money we would expect.
We are preparing to make an early LR01 just to get something in, because we are aware that the OLDC system will be down from about the 1st of December intermittently because it won’t be able to cope with the sheer volume of data being chucked at it.
I am surprised that it hasn’t been down today (yet).
We’ve always had these sorts of problems. The trouble is that the data scrutiny we’re getting is becoming unacceptable. Trying to make sense out of all the PDSAT reports to satisfy auditors and Ofsted is putting an immense strain on the system.