Paul Taylor commented, 07 July 2021 12:53

I echo the points above that Steve H has made regarding publishing data that is wrong which is incredibly frustrating. We spent half a day trying to unpick this before realising that it did not give us what we needed, which is the ability to cross check against our internally held data. Multiply that by however many providers and that is a lot of wasted hours. Onto the other issues: - When you publish R10 then do not only include learners with planned end dates up to the R10 submission. Give us the whole year as this is what we will be looking at. - Please gives us 19/20. We want to check this also and redacting it means that we cannot unpick all our differences. - A more fundamental issue; will the agency consider bringing in a planned EPA date to help more realistically plot when learners will complete within achievement rate cohorts? The planned end date for standards is likely to always be several months before the achievement date meaning that achievement rate cohorts are much more volatile than they have ever been. - What is the process for updating an EPA outcome when a failure is recorded in one year, but a resit is achieved in a subsequent year? How does this get picked up within the QAR calc? - can you tell us if and when an outcome related minimum standards replacement will be introduced.

1. Have your questions answered about QARs (6 July to 16 July)

I echo the points above that Steve H has made regarding publishing data that is wrong which is incredibly frustrating. We spent half a day trying to unpick this before realising that it did not giv...

Paul Taylor commented, 30 June 2021 14:14

Hi Gaynor - our data is the same. It looks like they have loaded some dummy data and not actuals. We've just raised with ESFA. Thanks Paul

1. QAR dashboard as at R10

Hi Gaynor - our data is the same. It looks like they have loaded some dummy data and not actuals. We've just raised with ESFA. Thanks Paul

Paul Taylor commented, 25 February 2021 15:44

Hi Matt  We've not received ours yet. Was yours uploaded to the EFA Information exchange (I've no idea why we are  still using this when all other allocations are posted elsewhere but I digress.....). It's an interesting point for training providers. The Agency acknowledged the impact of COVID on March to July recruitment for training providers with year round recruitment by providing a small amount of financial relief for some institutions that experienced a reduction compared the previous year. However, if we are then subsequently penalised through the allocations process for this then we are being treated unfairly as a consequence. I'd raise this with your local partnership team and I'd expect AELP to raise this if this is a pattern.  Paul

1. 16-19 allocations

Hi Matt  We've not received ours yet. Was yours uploaded to the EFA Information exchange (I've no idea why we are  still using this when all other allocations are posted elsewhere but I digress.......

Paul Taylor commented, 24 February 2021 14:45

This is a welcome update. It would be useful if the Agency continued to monitor this though as we may need this flexibility beyond April 21. The flexibility acknowledges the difficulties of bedding this in. However, March and April are not peak recruitment months - April has 2 months of Easter in - and from April all starts will need to go through the Apps Service with funds reserved for non-levy payers so the volume will ramp up from April onwards and most significantly in early Autumn 21

1. Supporting users to access funding for backdated starts in AS

This is a welcome update. It would be useful if the Agency continued to monitor this though as we may need this flexibility beyond April 21. The flexibility acknowledges the difficulties of bedding...

Paul Taylor commented, 28 January 2021 11:31

Hi Sophie It depends on what exactly you are trying to do. Most people will use their funding reports or their MIS as a way of doing this. You can get really scientific with this or do this a bit more broadly. As a starting point you should plan what you are trying to forecast, and then set up some mechanisms that allow you to do this on an ongoing basis to try and remove as many manual processes as possible.  Your funding reports will drop in monthly payments for future months so this is usually a good place to start. This will give you remaining monthly payments for the rest of the academic year for your existing learners without you having to do too much work. You can also quite easily set up some formulae to predict when achievement payments are going to land using planned end dates. You might want to apply some dampening calculations to these values which allow for early leavers based on achievement rates for example. it may be useful to know this maximum value. That will take care of the income for the learners that you know about, but you may need to factor in those that you do not know about such as future starts. Someone should have a plan for starts volumes that you could pick up and apply some average monthly costs to to help predict future unknown income, factoring in things like incentive payments for 16-18 year olds may be. You might want to be able to have some mechanism for flexing this up or down to model more or less starts than planned. There are other ways of doing this which are less complicated and depends on your business. We look at year on year patterns of funding performance and apply those patters to current funding to predict what  the next few months or year look like. If your delivery is more volatile then this may not work but if your monthly volumes and values are more steady then this could be useful top level modelling info. There are specialist forecasting pieces of software out there or consultants who can some in and help you set this up. It's really important information - more so now than ever - so may be worth some investment.

1. Forecasting Funding

Hi SophieIt depends on what exactly you are trying to do. Most people will use their funding reports or their MIS as a way of doing this. You can get really scientific with this or do this a bit mo...

Paul Taylor commented, 22 January 2021 09:15

It's completely up to you how you collect the co-investment payment. The only rule is that you collect it all so that the achievement payment can be released Paul

1. Can the co-investment payment split into three?

It's completely up to you how you collect the co-investment payment. The only rule is that you collect it all so that the achievement payment can be releasedPaul

Paul Taylor commented, 13 January 2021 13:01

Hi Alex It seems to me that you are trying to produce summarised income reports and also produce MI from a report which is only designed to give you one of these things.   You can do both but it may be easier to split these tasks up. An obvious question to ask whether or not your MI this can be produced from your MIS? The purpose of the indicative funding report to produce funding info. We use templates that we drop the indicative reports into. One containing last month's month end report, and one containing this month's version. Each contains a series of look ups that go and fetch the YTD totals from the monthly income columns to the right so that for R05 we will total the August to December income, and then take this from the previous month's version to give you the net in month income total. For Apprenticeship provision you should use the period end reports as opposed to the indicative reports as they will include the impact of any Apps Service mismatches and also helpfully gives you your net income amount within the report. If you need to use the indicative report for MI, and excel is your only reporting solution, then again you could create a template that counts starts / funded in learning / leavers / achievers using a series of IF, IFS and AND statements and summary columns; - create a column which creates start month from the learning start date and use this in a pivot to summarise starts, reporting only on zprog aims and excluding restarts - create 12 period columns to count your funded in learning per month (August = start date <01/09/20, planned end date >=30/09/20, end date >=30/09/20 or is null etc). Again only report on zprogs.  Something like thus may help but hopefully you should have a reporting solution in your MIS. Use google to find formula solutions and if stuck get a consultant in to build a few reports for you.

1. MI reports - advice please

Hi AlexIt seems to me that you are trying to produce summarised income reports and also produce MI from a report which is only designed to give you one of these things.  You can do both but it may ...