2010/11 ILR Change Discussion

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• Change request 46: Vaildity of EDRS number in field A44 (13 posts)

• Paul said 1 year, 1 month ago:

  The National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) http://www.apprenticeships.org.uk/About-Us/National-Apprenticeship-Service.aspx want to ensure that the Employer Data Service (EDS) number is valid in field A44. This will ensure more accurate recording of employer information which will enable NAS to identify types of employers and areas of business where Apprenticeships may be lacking. You can read this proposal in full in our 'Change Requests for the 2010/11 ILR' document.http://www.theia.org.uk/ilr/RequestforChange/

  In 2009/10, a validation warning has been put in place to check the data entered in field A44 against that held by the EDS.

  The information authority proposes for 2010/11 to make this validation check an error which would reject the learner record. This validation check would take place on ILR submission to the Online Data Collection (OLDC) portal only.

  To help providers obtain EDS numbers easily and accurately, we have asked the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) http://www.lsc.gov.uk/ to look to enhance EDS so that providers could access employer data directly from their MI systems via a web service.

  We invite you to leave your views on the implementaion of this change in the thread below.

  The closing date for comments will be Friday 4 September, at which point the information authority secretariat will collate responses and use them to make a recommendation to the information authority board on Wednesday 30 September.

  Note: You need to be a registered user of feconnect to respond to this thread. If you do not already have a user account, please see our Beginner's Guide http://forums.theia.org.uk/media/p/941.aspx for details of how to sign up.

  Paul Kelman
  The information authority
  E: paul.kelman@theia.org.uk
  T: 02476 823597
  M: 07917 475195

• Tony Braithwaite said 1 year, 1 month ago:

  In principle data validation at the time of entry is a good thing. How it would be implemented is another story. It would have to be an online access system, available at all times, for it to be of any use. There will have to be no delay between the creation of a new number and it's validation when entered onto the provider's MI.

  This would have to be a free service. Who would resolve data transfer issues?

  There is a related issue where previously valid EDRS becaomes invalid because an employer moves or is taken over. We have had once such incident this year and only found out because the Data Service emailed us yesterday with the invalid number after analysing our ER return for migration – only 3 days before final submission of the W12 return. Neither the learner nor the assessor was aware that the address had changed. (I'm not even sure why the EDRS had become invalid for this reason.)

  I would say that obtaining EDRS in general is a data burden that cannot at present be undertaken automatically. If there is to be any direct validation then it would be useful if the whole process could be streamlined, maybe on a similar basis for creating ULNs.

• peterw said 1 year, 1 month ago:

  On the ILR, I thought that the EDRS number was the number of the employer when learning started. Learners may change their employer and the old employer may go out of business. Thus EDRS numbers may well be on the Learner record for defunct companies..

  Also, on the ILR, the Employer's Postcode is the Postcode at start of learning – Thus a match with the EDRS postcode cannot be guaranteed.

  PeterW

• pramshaw said 1 year, 1 month ago:

  I agree with Tony on this one. If this validation is linked to the live EDRS system our returns could have an unpredictable number of errors. I've seen a lot of our EDRS numbers invalidated after they're issued for no apparent reason and don't really want this to happen on the day of submission.

  I've never really liked the idea that the portal applies additional validation rules, it makes submission that much trickier, this could make things quite a bit worse.

  Perhaps if it's implemented it could be a warning only? This would give allow a little more flexibility….

• peterw said 7 months ago:

  Any thoughts yet on how to use EDRS numbers which are no longer valid ?

• Jon Brown said 6 months, 1 week ago:

  I'd like to underline the point that Peter has made. In our experience it is quite possible for EDRS numbers to change. Sometimes the reason for this is not clear. The Employer Data Service does not necessarily give reasons. Secondly as Peter has said, the EDRS number is supposed to be that when the student starts along with the postcode. Therefore it is entirely plausible for the EDRS number to be incorrect by the end of learning.

• peterw said 6 months, 1 week ago:

  I dont think that we will have a problem with new Learners. Their employer should still be trading when we enter their details on the system. If not, we will use their new employer's EDRS number.

  But will the learners who migrate from 2009/10 to 2010/11  need a valid and current EDRS number ?

  Some of the Learners are on 4 year courses, so the EDRS number used in September 2008 will remain through to 2012/13

  PeterW

• Anita said 6 months, 1 week ago:

  Jon / Peter

  The Employer Identifier should be entered at the start of the learning aim and does not need to be updated if the placement or employer change.

  For Train to Gain learners the Employer Identifier must be entered but for Apprenticeship main learning aims a warning will be generated for the first three ILR returns of the year where the learning aim start date is more than 60 days before the reference date for the return.  From ER04 onwards this will become a validation error for these learners.

  The migration rules for 2010/11 (Appendix B) have now been published on our website at http://www.theia.org.uk/downloads/ilrdocuments/201011_ilrdetail.htm, which includes the details of how field A44 will be migrated.

  Regards

  Anita Holcroft – the information authority

• James said 6 months ago:

  PeterW wrote: 
  "Any thoughts yet on how to use EDRS numbers which are no longer valid ?"

  You should be able to request that the URN is made valid again. I can't exactly remember where I've read it (or if I've just been told by them directly) but you can put in the 'notes' section when you update a record that you want it to be re-activated.

  The good thing about EDRS is that the staff are usually quite quick at replying. They are usually good at picking up the phone and actually speaking to you too.

  Anita, are you saying then that if a learner changes employer half-way through their programme, we don't need to update field A44?

• James said 6 months ago:

  As Tony said, it would be very handy if you could have a request tool like the one for ULNs. An overnight process would be ideal although I suppose it would be complicated and difficult to manage from EDS end because they have to contact the employers. There still must be some way of automating the process.

• peterw said 5 months, 4 weeks ago:

  As far as I understand the migration from 2009-10 to 2010-11, the EDRS number will be copied if the value in the field is all numeric.

  If this is then valiated against a Valid EDRS database. what happens where we have a number that was valid in 2008, but no longer valid in 2010.

  I don't think EDRS would reinstate it if the company is no longer trading

• Anita said 5 months, 4 weeks ago:

  If a company is no longer trading then a record still exists on the EDRS database but its status is changed to indicate it is no longer a valid employer.  The validation will therefore check that the employer number exists in the database rather than just against records that have a status of 'valid'. 

  I hope that helps to clarify this issue.

  Regards

  Anita

• peterw said 1 month, 2 weeks ago:

  The Dummy migration from 2009-10 to 2010-11 has rejected some EDRS Number, where the employer is no longer current.
  Data Services says this is because the Dummy migration only used Current Employers, but it will use the full database for the actual migration.