Programme Cost Weighting

Hi Sarah,

Nobody has tried to tackle this one yet, so I'll give it ago! Unfortunately the guidance isn't very clear on how this works so this is more of an educated guess looking at our toolkit, so you may want to put in a helpdesk request to confirm the actual calculation.

When calculating A Level programme weighting - firstly your Core Aim will be looked at to gather if your learner is an Academic/Vocational since it is possible for learners to do a hybrid of 2x A Levels alongside a Cert/Diploma as a hybrid.

Once the student is identified to be academic, they will lookup via the Qualifications affected by programme cost weighting changes - GOV.UK to see if any of the academic qualification aims are on this list which have met the qualifying period & if the learner has 2+ eligible qualifications you will get the 1.13 programme weighting if you don't you will continue to get the 1.0 programme weighting.

I expect your A Level subjects have equal hours so you have the free choice to pick which A Level subject to choose. I expect you already do this but worth mentioning where these A Levels core aims could be picked at "random" it's tempting to get some script/SQL to pick one at random & leave it but it's important to know the Core Aim also impacts your retention factor also so as an end of year task for our A Levels we make sure the Core Aim is on something not transferred/withdrawn where they have other substantial completed/continuing aims & for full withdrawals we make sure the enrolment with the latest "end date" is picked so we can maximise the last working day of June element.

Overall to answer your question before going off on my tangent - I believe you can pick any of these subjects but for peace of mind I'd probably not pick the A Level Maths because that's not on the A Level PCW list but the other two subjects are.