Withdrawn learner - restart - 20%OTJ

The guidance is:

For apprenticeships this field 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. 

HTH

Martin West - so even though there has been a 10 month gap, we add the same planned OTJ hours from the original ILR record? 

Yes this is confirmed in the Provider support guidance:

For both apprenticeships and T Levels, planned hours are only recorded against the programme aim, are set at the beginning, and cover the entire duration of the programme.

HTH

Thanks Martin, much appreciated.

Hello,

I wanted to bring this up again. Back in Dec 2019, I asked the service desk about this, and they said;

I have received confirmation that the remaining off the job training would need to be entered in the 'Planned Hours' field for a restart apprenticeship.

Apologies for the confusion in relation to the funding rules.

Our technical team are currently working on the provider support manual to have this added.

It's still not explicitly in any of the rules, and I'm still not 100% sure on what we should be doing. This contradicts what you said Martin West. The guidance you've quoted says "programme", but it doesn't say whether a restart after a really long gap is considered the same programme.

I do actually think it would be better to record the original Planned OTJ as you've said, because you could actually get away with under-delivering OTJ if you didn't.

Say if there was only 6 months left when they originally withdrew from a 24 month apprenticeship, and the Planned OTJ had been 800, and they'd completed 600 as they were on track. If we restart them two years later, and we record the OTJ as 800 again, we technically only need to achieve a further 200? They may have been given a new duration of a whole 12 months as they have forgotten stuff, so we'd actually recommend a further 400 on the commitment statement. If we recorded 800 planned OTJ, we'd then end up with 1,000 Actual OTJ if we tie them together, but that involves digging out some really old evidence.

If I slightly change that, and say they were behind on the old apprenticeship and had only done 500 hours, as they were behind. This time, when we restart, they only need the remaining 6 months. If we recorded that as just 200 hours for the restart, even if we could evidence the 200, we'd be short on the overall hours for the full duration. So, I do think recording the 800 again is right.

It's a lot trickier if there's been a big gap, as we need to make sure we spot this and dig out the original planned OTJ and actual OTJ records. Anyone else got any thoughts on this, or advice from ESFA? When it's a transfer in from another provider, presumably we can't use their original Planned OTJ, and just record the OTJ planned with us?

You may have received confirmation that the remaining off the job training would need to be entered in the 'Planned Hours' field for a restart apprenticeship, the important consideration is the rules phrase ‘with the Training provider’ and my interpretation is for a restart with the same provider it would still be the original hours but for a transfer in it would only be the hours deliver by the new provider.

HTH

My question to ESFA was definitely talking about same provider. I just think they were wrong. It still needs adding to the rules properly. Thanks for confirming!

Sorry - the more I look at this the more confused I get! 

"Re-starts" after a Withdrawal - return Original learning start date or not? Guidance I see indicates no but have been previously told yes.

Also, was advised to record original Planned Hours. But as we have slightly extended the overall duration to enable learner to refresh learning after a long break, surely the hours to an auditor would look too low? 

The original start date is not returned, see: https://guidance.submit-learner-data.service.gov.uk/22-23/psm/article/recording-breaks-in-learning-transfers-and-restarts#article-Recording%20restarts%20(without%20an%20agreed%20break%20in%20learning)

One of the overall rules is that the planned end date must not be changed, regarding a return from a BIL the guidance is clear as below

P35.2.1 Where the apprentice takes a break in learning and then returns to the same apprenticeship, the apprenticeship agreement must be revised, to account for the duration of the break. It must be clear that there have been multiple episodes of learning. The overall duration of the apprenticeship and the required volume of off-the-job training can remain the same (as though there had been no break in learning).

This is not the same for a return from a withdrawal as there may be circumstances where the learner needs to catch up after a long absence from training, but the OTJ hours are as recorded on the original commitment statement, and this is not updated in the ILR but only on the new training plan for the restart.

HTH