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no, no and no! ;)
Total off the job is what you are GOING to deliver having taken RPL into account, exactly the same as we've always done
Total reduction is how many hours you're NOT going to deliver
Price reduction is HOW MUCH YOU'VE TAKEN OFF
The latter two are what we've been submitting directly to AS for the last two years but now they're in the ILR instead.
I hoped I'd get a sensible answer here, Steve Hewitt :) DAS helpdesk have told me:
(10:05:11) rachel.dennis: NEW: Total off-the-job training time for this apprenticeship standard (Enter the total in hours) - do you mean the hours we have agreed or the published minimum hours?
(10:06:11) [Helpdesk person]: The published hours
10:07:29) rachel.dennis: ok - thanks - and then the price is the amount we are charging (in this section: Price reduction due to prior learning)?
(10:08:25) [Helpdesk person]: Yes, the total price reduced due to RPL
So wrong on both counts?
I wrote the longest reply then lost it when I got auto logged out! 😫
But yes, what Steve said. The Hours Type guidance is unclear, but if you scroll down to the Notes on the main Hours Entity page, it's clearer.
The helpdesk are just wrong! Read the notes section I've linked to, plus the guidance on RIP. TNP1+2 is the total price after reductions, so what would be the point in repeating that in RIP?
One to report back to DfE, Steve? They can't keep giving out this misinformation.
Also, something else I keep seeing being done wrong is the price reduction calculation. It's based on hours not delivered compared with the hours you normally deliver for that standard, not the published minimum. If the minimum is 520, but all your non-RPL apprentices usually do 560, your price reduction is actually slightly smaller if you use the correct value.
Calculate the percentage of prior learning that the individual has, as a percentage of the off-the-job training hours that would be delivered to an individual with no relevant prior learning for the same standard. Providers must use their own planned hours which must be at least (but can be higher than) the volume of off-the-job training hours published on the standard as the starting point for the calculation (see paragraph 85).
Thanks Ruth Canham-James - exactly this: "so what would be the point in repeating that in RIP?" - this is when i knew something was wrong
Has the end date entered on DAS changed to practical period end too? It was always EPA end date?
thanks
The Helpdesk has now said this in response to my email this morning:
I understand from your email you would like assistance on filling fields with a learner's record.
Regarding the total off-the-job training time for this apprenticeship standard, it should be the published minimum.
The published minimum is for an apprentice with no RPL. If a learner has RPL, you deduct this from the published minimum and that gives you the new minimum requirement. E.g published minimum is 400 hours, you identify RPL of 30 hours, new minimum is 370 (400-30).
Why would we enter the published minimum hours in this field when they already know what the published minimum hours are?
😩
I tried again and gave them a working example - see italics. Today the Helpdesk say:
I understand you would like confirmation of the RPL fields when adding a learner.
"Total off-the-job training for this apprenticeship standard." This is as it is the off-the-job training hours for this standard without RPL. So if we deliver 1000 OtJ Hours before RPL, we would enter 1000 (and this is different to the published Minimum hours for compliance).
- That is correct, Rachel. You enter the full amount of OTJH you would usually deliver before RPL.
"Off the job training time reduction due to prior learning". This is the amount of hours you are reducing the above by due to the learners RPL. So if the apprentice was doing 800 OtJ hours, we would enter 200 (as 1000 – 800 = 200)
- That is correct, Rachel.
"Price reduction due to prior learning". This is the amount that you are reducing the overall price by, in relation to the hours that you are reducing this standard by. So if the full cost was £10,000 and the apprentice’s RPL meant we were charging £8000, we would enter £2000
- That is correct, Rachel.
Thank you again for alerting us to the issues with the advice you have received from our team, and thanks to the community here for the support to provide a definitive answer. It is clear that the original advice was incorrect and we have updated internal training materials to reflect this. While the community has done an excellent job in identifying the main errors, the details below hopefully clarify everything asked about in the original request by Rachel.
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Total off-the-job training [hours]
- This is the total off-the-job (OTJ) hours you would usually deliver to an apprentice. This may be different to the published hours for the standard and is intended to reflect what you would normally provide to an apprentice who had zero RPL (Please note this is the field where there has been most confusion about on this thread). e.g. if you usually deliver 1000 hours to a typical apprentice with no RPL, you should record 1000 hours here.
-
Off-the-job training reduction [hours]
- This is the number of OTJ hours you will NOT be delivering to the apprentice due to the RPL assessment you have completed. It is not the total hours you are delivering after applying RPL which is collected separately in the ILR. e.g. if you have assessed RPL and determined this reduces the OTJ hours by 100, you should record 100 hours here.
-
Price reduction as a result of RPL [£'s]
- This is the value you have reduced as a result of the reduced hours. It is not the total price you have agreed which is [also] collected in the ILR. e.g. if you usually charge £1,000 for this standard and aim to reduce this to £900, you should record £100 here as the reduction.
I hope this clarifies the information currently required when recording RPL in the apprenticeship service. Following recent changes to the ILR we are planning further reductions to the data collected in the apprenticeship service for RPL, so the above is expected to change again at some point, hopefully to remove some or all of these fields. We will also review the in-service content on this page in the apprenticeship service to see if we can make the requirement clearer.
If anyone has any further questions please contact the support team or feel free to update on here which I will keep under review.
Hi Jason Poole. The first one contradicts what is in the written guidance, so if this answer is correct, can the official guidance please be updated. https://guidance.submit-learner-data.service.gov.uk/26-27/ilr/entity/HRSRecord
For apprenticeships this entity collects the Planned off-the-job training hours (as defined in the funding rules) that will be delivered to the individual apprentice over the full apprenticeship (excluding the end-point assessment period) by the training provider, sub-contracted training providers and the employer.
The amount we would usually deliver is used in the calculation to determine price reduction, but HRS 1 is written in the guidance as the hours that we will deliver.
The published rules read that HRS1 + HRS4 = "Usual hours" (which must be at least minimum).
What you've said above reads as HRS1 - HRS4 = What we will actually deliver but we can't record anywhere.
There are more reasons for hours reductions that just RPL, so where would we record the OTJ hours we're actually delivering? We might have a Standard where the minimum hours are 800, but we usually deliver 850. We could then have an apprentice with no RPL, but where we've reduced OTJ to 810 because they are planning a shorter duration. Based in your advice above, we'd still have to record 850 even though there is no intention to deliver that? That's not what the ILR Spec says.
Thanks for the question Ruth which we will take away to consider and post back here with an update. In the meantime please consider the above posted response I made to be correct.
UPDATE: - Ruth, I think you are referring to the ILR data collection about planned hours and RPL. The advice above is specifically related to the RPL fields collected in the apprenticeship service. In terms of your interpretation of the ILR rules, I did check with relevant colleagues and can confirm you have that spot on.
Jason Poole These fields aren't going to be required in the Apprenticeship Service soon because they are going in the ILR instead, that's the whole point of the new HRS4 and RIP fields (HRS1 is just a replacement of an existing field). Whilst Rachel said "DAS" fields, those are not new, so I assumed she is referring to the new ILR fields. rachel.dennis, can you confirm which fields you mean? The new ones in the ILR, or the ones we've had for a while in the Apprenticeship Service itself?
Hi Ruth Canham-James it was the Apprenticeship Service (DAS) fields I was referring to as we are still manually entering these records, rather than using the ILR upload function.
Well, now we know about both! 😂 It's very odd that the definition of Total OTJ changes across systems, especially as I suspect the DAS ones won't be there for long now the ILR ones are in place.
Which new fields are there in DAS? All the fields I can see have been there for a long time.
rachel.dennis
New DAS Prior Learning Field
Edited
Please can someone clarify the new DAS Prior Learning fields for me? Is this correct:
NEW: Total off-the-job training time for this apprenticeship standard - here you enter the actual total off-the-job training time i.e. the published hours even if we plan to deliver a different amount of OtJ hours to those published
NEW: Total reduction in off-the-job training time due to RPL - here you enter the total reduced hours due the RPL i.e. the OtJ hours we have agreed to deliver due to RPL
NEW: Price reduction due to prior learning – here you enter the price you are charging which has been reduced due to RPL
Is this correct?