A learner is flagged on a data quality or funding monitoring report
This has been flagged because it is worth checking. It may be entirely correct. Investigate before assuming anything is wrong.
In plain English
A record meets the criteria of a report that identifies data worth checking. That is a request to investigate, not a statement that the record is wrong. Some flagged records are entirely correct and simply need their evidence to be locatable.
Why it matters
Reports of this kind focus on the places where funding is most often claimed incorrectly. Working them properly finds real errors while they are still correctable, and builds the evidence that answers the same question at audit.
Funding
Depends entirely on the finding. Genuine errors found here are corrected before they become recoveries.
Performance
Where the finding concerns completion, outcome or dates, the performance measures move too.
Audit
Working these reports well is the single most effective audit preparation available, because it tests the same things in advance.
Most likely causes
Ranked, because in practice a few causes explain most cases.
- commonThe record is genuinely wrongOften a date, a status or a monitoring code that does not reflect what actually happened.
- commonThe record is correct but unusualReports find outliers. An unusual but genuine circumstance will be flagged every time, and the right response is to document it once so the answer is ready next time.
- occasionalThe record is correct but the evidence cannot be locatedThe most dangerous category, because it looks fine internally and fails externally.
Check these first
- Read the report's own documentation to establish exactly what the criteria are. Do not infer them from the name.
- Establish whether the flagged records share a characteristic, which points at a process cause.
- For each record, ask three questions in order: is it right, can it be evidenced, and is it repeatable.
- Check whether the same records were flagged last period and nothing happened.
How to investigate
- Work groups, not rows. A report with two hundred rows usually has four or five causes.
- Separate the three outcomes clearly: wrong and corrected, right and evidenced, right but evidence missing.
- Record the explanation for correct records so nobody re-investigates them next period.
- Where a report repeats every period with the same records, the control has failed, not the data.
In your system
These steps are system-neutral: they describe what has to be true in the data, which is the same whatever software your college runs. We do not publish supplier screen paths we have not verified, because menu locations differ by version and by local configuration, and a confidently wrong instruction is worse than none.
System-neutral
- Obtain the report and the current documentation of its criteria for the funding year.
- Group the flagged records by likely cause rather than working down the list.
- For each group, check the underlying data against the source evidence.
- Correct what is wrong in the source system; document what is right.
- Keep the documented explanations, because the same records are likely to be flagged again.
Building your own map of where each of these lives in your system is the most useful induction document an MIS team can have. How to build one.
How to fix it
- Correct genuine errors in the source system and regenerate.
- Document correct records with the evidence that makes them defensible.
- Where evidence is missing for a correct record, obtain it now rather than at audit.
- Feed the causes back into the control that should have prevented them.
Stop this happening again
Fixing the record clears this case. A control is what stops the next one, so each of these names what to do, who owns it and how often.
Run the reports yourself each period rather than waiting to receive them, so issues are found and fixed internally first.
A standing log of explained exceptions, so a recurring legitimate case is answered once rather than every period.
A root-cause review of any report where the same records recur, addressing the process rather than the records.
The rules behind this
Appearing on a data-quality or funding-monitoring report usually means a record has been flagged for investigation, not that it is confirmed wrong. Some flagged records are entirely correct and simply need evidence.
Evidence is strongest when it is created at the time of the event it describes and is retrievable without reconstruction. Evidence assembled after a query is asked is weaker and takes longer to produce.
Sources
These are the official documents this page rests on. Where a figure, a deadline or an exact rule matters, the document is the authority and this page is the explanation.
Content reused from GOV.UK is Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence. FEFunding is not endorsed by the Department for Education.