Forecasting AEB funding taking into account withdrawals etc.

Hi Steven

Yeah, I've done something like this. Key thing is not to just use a retention rate because payments are generated each month so it depends *when* people withdraw.

So, you can take the occupancy report, sum received on-prog funding for a qual and then look at what the max on-prog funding for that qual would've been had all the learners completed. Is a bit shaky because received funding will have Area Cost and DU in (so remember to include it in your max values too, rather than just using the flat rate), and the latter is subject to a bit of variance year on year, but it will give you a reasonable percentage to do some modelling on?

Thanks Steve that's helpful. Do you recalculate the percentage each month taking into account withdrawals that will have been processed? If I apply the same percentage in March that I did in November the occupancy report will already include some funding reduction so applying the same percentage might over estimate? Or am I making this too complicated...

Yeah, I've only done it looking at last year's to forecast what this year should be, rather than anything more complex...

Thanks for responding Steve.

Hi Steveh,

Do you follow a similar approach when forecasting apprenticeship retention/achievement rates for future years?  It's difficult because we have a lot of 1 year apps so current starts in future years is lower than expected so I'm not sure if using ProA and it's best case system setting is useful or whether to look at a manual calculation.

Many Thanks,

Sarah

Hi Sarah

Sadly I've not come up with a magic formula for Apprenticeships! Problem is working out when they're likely to complete their EPA as that defines which Hybrid End Year they'll end up in BUT, crucially, isn't in the ILR data at the start, so A Lot Of Fiddling About must be done...

Been a while since I used ProAch in anger, but can't imagine they've built something to do this? Whereas I know 4Cast has *something* like this in, although I think that's more funding based than Ach Rates (for clarity, I know people at all of the software houses, but have never been paid by any of them!).