2011/12 ILR – Discussion Area

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• Change request 3 – Unfunded employer responsive provision (10 posts)

• Selvy said 1 year, 9 months ago:

  Hello there

  Yes its me again – this time with an update on change request 3 – link at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/201112-change-request-3. Stakeholders have been contributing to this survey and I hope you see why we need more of you to contribute.

  As of this morning we received 20 responses. Some of the comments suggest that the sector is slightly confused by ‘unfunded apprentices’. Anita Holcroft hopes this explanation will assist – ‘The Skills Funding Agency would like providers that currently have a contract with the Skills Funding Agency to deliver Apprenticeships to return data on all the Apprenticeship provision they deliver, not just those that are Skills Funding Agency funded. For example, the provider may have been awarded a contract with the Skills Funding Agency to deliver 100 Apprenticeships on the basis that they will also deliver a further 100 Apprenticeships that are not funded by the Skills Funding Agency. The Skills Funding Agency would therefore like data on all 200 Apprenticeships to be returned in the ILR.’

  Of the 14 colleges that responded, six thought it is a good idea to record unfunded provision on their Employer Responsive return and that the data burden was manageable. Seven colleges thought it was a bad idea with four of these considering the data burden manageable.

  According to the respondents, the numbers of learners affected also varies significantly. One respondent has 200 learners who would not normally be recorded but does not see why they would need to be recorded as it would only serve to identify the provider delivering the provision. Another respondent currently has around 40 such learners and records them within the Learner Responsive returns to avoid the validation errors that arise in Employer Responsive returns.

  Overall the sector seems quite undecided on this change request. The change requesters were hoping to that the addition of this information would provide a complete picture of apprenticeship delivery. Yet comments so far suggest that the sector is undecided on the benefits. As one respondent says: ‘I thought this Government was committed to reducing the data burden on Colleges!’

  What is your opinion on recording unfunded apprenticeships? Do you feel the benefits outweigh the burden? Let us know. The link to the survey is http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/201112-change-request-3 and you can also join the discussion here or write to us at cst@theia.org.uk.

  Selvy

• Alan Taws said 1 year, 9 months ago:

  I'm not 100% clear what is meant by "unfunded" – we have some provision where we have exceeded the maximum contract value and therefore we are not entitled to fund any new starts – we have also been asked to delete some existing funded ILRs in order to retrospectively reduce the amount drawn down to back within the MCV.
  I'm more than happy to give my thoughts on that particular problem if that's what you mean by unfunded?

• Anita said 1 year, 9 months ago:

  Hi Alan

  Yes, NAS would like data to be returned for any Apprenticeship provision that is delivered, whether funded by the Skills Funding Agency or not, so these learners would be included.

  We welcome your comments on this.

  Regards

  Anita

• Alan Taws said 1 year, 9 months ago:

  The provision in question is actually Train to Gain so I'm not sure that the same principles apply but if I give you a bit of background information… one of our subsidiary companies was given a very small Train to Gain allocation for 2009/10 – we questioned this with the local LSC office and it is still our belief that the amount awarded was the result of a serious micalculation or administrative error on the part of the LSC.
  But, politics aside, we were already oversubscibed on the programme by November and we have now been asked to delete ILRs from November through to July. The records in question are for either learners who are still studying towards their NVQ or learners who have achieved their NVQ. None of the learners on the programme since November have withdrawn/failed so we are now being asked to delete the data of what is perfectly good provision.
  So whilst this is Train to Gain I am talking about it does seem to be a strange request when considering the NAS intention to capture non funded ILR data. Personally, and from a business perspective, I really don't want to delete data which would help in maintaining high success rates – and equally, if the proposed deletions were learners who had failed to gain their NVQ then I'm quite sure that from an audit/inspection point of view a lot of questions would be asked.

• Anita said 1 year, 9 months ago:

  Thanks for your comments.

  The request is to collect data on Apprenticeship provision only. This is to allow NAS to have a more complete picture of Apprenticeship delivery as a whole.

  Regards

  Anita

• Alan Taws said 1 year, 9 months ago:

  I can apply the same rationale to Apprenticeships – the key question being would an unfunded learner count towards the provider's success rates?
  If so then I think it's likely that the NAS will get a somewhat skewed picture of non funded provision as providers are hardly going to be motivated to report on any unfunded provision that might adversely affect success rates. And given that unfunded provision may suffer from lack of resource then I think it's not unreasonable to assume that unfunded provision may have a lower success rate… and therefore perhaps providers may be less inclined to take on the burden of recording it?

• Anita said 1 year, 9 months ago:

  Unfunded provision would not count towards the provider success rates.

  Regards

  Anita

• Alan Taws said 1 year, 9 months ago:

  Hi Anita

  I was going to move my comment to the survey but it doesn't appear to be available (or I'm doing something wrong). Anyway, final thoughts and if you think it's worth passing on to change request powers that be then please do so.
  I'm surpised that unfunded learners don't count towards success rates and I'd be interested to know how Ofsted see things but, anyway, if they don't count towards success rates and we don't get paid for it them, then from a non college / smaller provider perpsective, we'd be hoping to avoid non funded learners altogether. Last year we had to manage our budgets within an August to March / April to July split with an unbalanced high proportion of the overall budget having to be delivered in the April to July period. This led to us having too many learners for the August to March period, some of which were therefore unfunded, and not enough learners for the April to July period leading to cuts in the contract value. For a small provider this is extremely difficult to manage and puts a tremendous strain on resources, staff recruitment etc. We'd much rather not be put in a position where we have unfunded learners, nevermind the burden of recording their ILRs. Colleges on the other hand should find it easier to absorb the cost of unfunded learners in terms of staff time and resources but I'm not surprised that many of them don't seem happy with the idea either.

• Anita said 1 year, 9 months ago:

  Hi Alan

  Thanks for your feedback, which will be taken into account when considering this change request.

  The consultation for Change Request 3 has dropped down on to the second page in Survey Monkey so you can access it by clicking on the page 2 link in the bottom right hand corner of the web page. Please let me know if you are still unable to access.

  Regards

  Anita

• Anita said 1 year, 9 months ago:

  Hi Alan

  Please ignore my last post. The issue seems to be with the first link in Selvy's post. Please try the following link which should go straight into the consultation for change request 3:

  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/201112-change-request-3

  Regards

  Anita