2023/2024 "Traineeship" as study programme

Well, I think that's the first time I've seen BREAKING NEWS on here ;)

In a sense it's good because a "normal" study prog can be made up of anything* and certainly six month programmes that start before Christmas are fine? Also means you don't have to:

a. worry about cross year records, everyone can finish in July regardless of length of programme

b. worry about all the post-learning destination stuff

c. worry about finding all of those work placements

and I assume you were still having to ask Trainees that started around Easter what they'd been doing for the rest of the year anyway, so that's not a change?

*some discussion about study programmes >50% EEP for non-HNS learners, but I suspect you and I will be hearing more about this...

Glad to be of service, although I own up Nick Linford got there first. The Trainees we started later in year were NEET which is why get referred to us as a more specialist provider. Remind me relevance of 6 month programme needing to start before Christmas? I assume finishing in July you mean we get hours within the academic year for whatever banding we can hit, and anyone looking to start, say, after May, we say has to wait until September?

So, we take learners on SPs until Really Quite Late in the year but have quite a strict process to make sure, as far as we can, that they've been NEET and not, eg completed a (full time) programme somewhere else already this year as it has caused grief at audit. So, yes, we'd usually bump them to next September from May.

Christmas was just an easy benchmark as they can't have been anywhere for a meaningful amount of time already (even if, say, they crossed six weeks at college then left, they can't have completed at that point).