Glossary
QAR
Qualification achievement rate
The published measure of how many learners achieved the qualifications they were expected to complete.
In full
Qualification achievement rates are calculated from submitted ILR data. Aims expected to finish in the year form a cohort, and achievement within that cohort is the rate.
Because the calculation reads the ILR, data quality is performance. Late withdrawals, missing outcomes and wrong planned end dates all move the published rate.
The rules behind this
Qualification achievement rates are calculated from submitted ILR data. Data-quality problems in the return become published performance problems.
Where this comes up
diagnostic
The achievement rate is lower than the college expected
The published or modelled achievement rate is lower than the college's own view of how well learners did. The difference is usually in the data rather than in the teaching.
module
Qualification achievement rates: how your data becomes your results
Achievement rates are calculated from the ILR. Understanding the cohort is what turns an unexplained rate into an explainable one.
diagnostic
Continuing learners from last academic year who do not appear in this year’s ILR
Your current year’s ILR must include any learning aims which were reported as continuing in the previous year’s final ILR return, even if the actual end date is in the previous funding year. Aims are identified as continuing when the Completion status is code 1. Failure to report timely and accurate withdrawals data in your previous year’s R14 return may have resulted in a funding overclaim. It may also affect your qualification achievement rates (QARs).
scenario
An achievement is recorded before the result is confirmed
A tutor is confident a learner has passed and asks for the achievement to be recorded before the awarding organisation confirms it.
diagnostic
An aim has ended but no outcome has been recorded
The aim has an actual end date, so the system knows it finished, but nothing records whether the learner achieved it. The achievement rate calculation treats an aim with no achievement recorded as a non-achievement.
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.
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.
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