AAF: QAR results now included for r10

Yes, very surprised!!! That's not what they said they were going to do... Everyone's R10 is incomplete, that's just what happens...

I understand that taking a view of all the data, however I feel it's the first time that they've used R10 data and made a judgement against us on it.

If they were to do this I would have thought that maybe they'd have had a increasing minimum (by R12 you'll be above 50% but at r10 you'll be above 40%?).

I'm still unsure about how they're going to use these figures as we haven't had any experience of being in the red so far. But I've briefed the rest of the management team to expect a letter or contact regarding being in the "At risk category" but that this will be resolved and we'll move to amber by the end of the year.

I'm taking c0ckup over conspiracy at this point...

So, had some feedback from the AAF team.

It *is* intentional and, apparently, they did it with R12 last year as well? But, it's, at least, only presented alongside the official statistics and not replacing them.

The line is that this will give them early warning of issues with providers, which I kind of get *but* I also pointed out the problems of trying to use in-year data for a dataset that, by definition, is backwards-looking and designed to do its calculation based on finalised data. That, in order to understand the in-year data, a certain level of expertise is required to avoid false positives (false negatives?) and I'm not sure either the sector or the agency, in general, have that level, so can foresee a lot of (needless?) work being done by providers to explain stuff to their contract managers that will be *fine*, like, next week...

Thanks Steve, that's really useful feedback from them.

I've briefed our team that we might get a call in the next couple of weeks and we've discussed our response and our pipeline of achievements between r10 and r12.

I had to admit I didn't notice the r12 data getting used last year. I get the feeling r12 would have been less of a shock  as r11 and r12 are completion heavy months for us. The EPAO's we use start to fill up in April with the end of year rush, so any gateways that happen after March tend not to complete until at least June or July. 

Yeah, and that's the main thing. The QAR calc doesn't even include those learners in the cohort for the year *until* they're "leavers", but it will be counting all your withdrawals already (because a leaver is either a completer or a withdrawal, not someone in Gateway or on programme, regardless of planned end).