Glossary
Collection period
One month of the funding year for which an ILR return is made.
In full
The funding year is divided into collection periods, each with an ILR return. Periods run from the start of the funding year, so the first period is August.
Earnings accrue by period, which is why funding reports are read period by period and reconciled monthly.
Where this comes up
module
The collection year: what each return is for
Fourteen returns, each restating the whole year. Three of them matter more than the others, and knowing which is most of the job.
module
FIS and Submit Learner Data: the submission workflow
When to validate locally, when an actual submission is needed, what each report tells you, and how resubmission works within a collection window.
module
How further education funding actually works
Colleges are not paid a block grant for teaching. They are funded through several separate streams, each with its own rules, and each earned by recording delivery in the ILR.
scenario
The same records appear on a report every single period
A monitoring report returns the same cluster of records month after month. Each time they are worked and each time they return.
module
From a learner walking in to funding arriving
The full chain: a learner event, the operational action it triggers, the source data it creates, the ILR fields it populates, validation, funding, reports, evidence, performance and audit.
diagnostic
Funding dropped this month and nobody can explain why
The funding report for this period shows less than expected, or less than last period. Because every return restates the whole year, a change made this month can move earnings reported in earlier months, so the drop may have nothing to do with this month's delivery.