Glossary
ULN
Unique Learner Number
The ten-digit number that identifies a learner across providers and across years.
In full
A Unique Learner Number is issued through the Learning Records Service and stays with the learner for life. It is what allows prior learning and prior attainment to be recognised, and what allows activity at more than one provider to be seen together.
A wrong or duplicated ULN does not just affect one record. It can break prior-attainment checks, produce apparent duplicate learners across providers, and put funding at risk.
The rules behind this
The Unique Learner Number identifies a learner across providers and across years, which is how prior attainment, prior learning and cross-provider activity can be recognised.
Where this comes up
diagnostic
The same learner appears twice
One person has been recorded twice, usually with two different learner reference numbers, and sometimes with two different ULNs. The system treats them as two people.
module
The anatomy of the ILR
What is actually inside the Individualised Learner Record: the entities, how they nest, and which fields carry the funding.
scenario
A returning learner is enrolled as a new person
A learner returns after two years. The enrolment search does not find them, so a new record and a new ULN are created.
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.
module
Getting it right at the front door
Most funding-critical data is captured at enrolment. Front-door quality is the cheapest data quality there is, and the only kind that scales.
module
The data quality routine that prevents most problems
A small number of checks, run every month without exception, prevent the majority of funding, performance and audit problems in further education.
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.