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I think that answers Q2? In that attendance is never a measure, only planning. I agree it doesn't answer Q1 though, was having a similar discussion at the conference on Wednesday and no one knew which way DfE would fall on it... So difficult to squeeze in those extra hours for someone who started a fortnight late, *particularly* because it has to be "whole class face to face" learning when it applies to a handful of learners across the college...
This is an interesting one but surely as long as your plans clearly show the minimum hours per subject for the banding of the learner you should be fine? How can you know at enrolment whether a learner will attend all the sessions? What about learners that don't actually need the full 100 hours before they sit an exam?
We put all ours on at 100 each but sometimes add in extra catch up sessions if the learners go PED. The wording in the guidance for audit and inspection does state "delivered" though....
Evidence must show planned hours delivery is realistic and deliverable. At individual maths and English aim level, planned hours must be clearly evidenced as delivered to each student.
Regarding Q1, I think we all agree that a late start, as long as they were actually enrolled on time and were due to attend the first lessons, SHOULD be able to keep all the planned hours (even if we have to adjust the start date). The reality of audit is not always consistent though. Having spoken to loads of providers about this, some have been told (by auditors) it's fine to keep all the hours, and some have been told to reduce hours. That's mostly for the whole study programme, but I'd say the same will end up applying to English and maths. We could really do with DfE adding some very clear guidance on this scenario (for both study programmes and E&M) so that auditors are consistent. Students actually enrolling in late September, we'd reduce the hours without question.
That bit you've posted Chris Roberts is a worry 😕 There's absolutely no way that all students will have good enough attendance to actually get 100 hours of evidenced delivery, and catching up just isn't an option. EMH/MMH are very definitely based on plan, so why is the audit bit talking about evidence of actual delivery? Surely that's a mistake, everything in section 12 just refers to plan.
No chance they can hold us all to 100 hours of positive attendance for each aim, every provider would technically be breaching COF at some level and I think Fiona's DFE response suggests we will be ok as long as its planned. If only the sampler tool was working in PDSATs we might be able get a better understanding of what the guidance to auditors is and what the actual responses for negative outcomes are. (Don't know how to do a sad face emoji)
Fiona Bridger
Condition of Funding
Created
Hi. We submitted the following query to the DfE who have replied but not really answered the 2 scenarios we presented, so would appreciate anyone else's opinions on this please.
Query
We would like confirmation around the delivery of the minimum English and maths hours, from a delivery and audit perspective.
In one part of the guidance says students must be “offered 100 hours each of English and/or maths teaching, to be delivered at any point in the academic year, and that “for full-time students, the minimum planned teaching hours requirement is a total of 100 hours for maths and/or 100 hours for English”. In section 13 Audit and inspection it states that "Evidence must show planned hours delivery is realistic and deliverable. At individual maths and English aim level, planned hours must be clearly evidenced as delivered to each student".
The query I have is:
1) if a student is enrolled and timetabled to do 100+ hours of English/maths but they do not turn up to the first session(s) as arranged and are absent, and the hours from their first actual date attendance takes them below the 100, do they meet the CoF? or do we have to plan more hours for those students?
2) if a student is enrolled and timetabled to do 100+ hours of English/maths, they start as planned but have some non attendance during the year, taking their actual hours under the 100 hours, do they meet the CoF? or do we have to plan more hours for those students and ensure they attend 100+ hours?
DfE Response
"As long as you take reasonable steps to prevent students from missing English and/or maths lessons, there should be no funding issues.
Where a student attends work experience or an educational visit, you should consider putting catch-up lessons in place if you believe the student may fall behind.
The key principle is that the planned hours submitted via your ILR returns are accurate. Any differences must be supported by sound academic reasons or alternative steps taken to compensate for the shortfall."