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Learning journey · Senior leader, principal or COO
Senior leader, new to further education
Six weeks to understand the funding landscape, why data quality is a leadership matter, and what good assurance looks like.
By the end you will be able to
- Explain the funding landscape and the college's main income mechanisms
- Understand why ILR quality is a funding and reputational matter, not an administrative one
- Know which returns have consequences that cannot be undone
- Ask assurance questions that produce information
- Recognise what a useful governance report contains
The plan
Six weeks is a suggestion of pace, not a schedule. Skip anything you already know, and come back to the rest whenever it suits you.
Week 121 minutes
How further education funding actually worksColleges 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.12 min Building a funding map for your collegeA funding map sets out every stream a college receives, how each is earned, when it reconciles and what data drives it. It is the fastest way for a finance or leadership newcomer to become useful.9 min
Week 222 minutes
16 to 19 funding: how the formula worksStudent numbers, band, national rate, retention, programme cost weighting and uplifts. Where each element comes from, and which of them your own data controls.11 min Adult Skills Fund: earning, evidencing and reconcilingAn allocation you have to earn, with eligibility that must be evidenced before you claim, and a reconciliation at the end that can reduce what you keep.11 min
Week 326 minutes
Week 418 minutes
How your data becomes your published resultsAchievement rates are calculated from the ILR. Understanding the cohort is what turns an unexplained rate into an explainable one.10 min The routine that prevents most problemsA small number of checks, run every month without exception, prevent the majority of funding, performance and audit problems in further education.8 min
Week 516 minutes
Being ready for a funding auditWhat an audit tests, how sampling turns a few errors into a large adjustment, and the preparation that actually helps.10 min A governor asks what the funding risk actually isAt a board meeting, a governor asks what would have to go wrong for the funding position to be materially misstated. What is a good answer?6 min
Week 617 minutes
Questions to ask MIS, and what a good answer looks likeA set of questions that a finance or senior leader can ask without being an ILR technician, each with the answer that should reassure you and the answer that should not.8 min What curriculum decisions do to fundingCurriculum teams make funding decisions every week without calling them that. This module connects each decision to the data it creates and the money it moves.9 min
Learning record
FEFunding Academy: FE funding for senior leaders
This is an FEFunding Academy learning record. It confirms that the named person completed this Academy learning path. It is not a regulated qualification and does not imply accreditation or endorsement by any government department or awarding organisation.