Audio lesson · 13 minutes
The anatomy of the ILR
What is actually inside the Individualised Learner Record: the entities, how they nest, and which fields carry the funding.
The audio for this lesson has not been rendered yet. The approved script and the full transcript are below, and they are the content: the audio is a derived format. We publish the words rather than a player that does not work.
Chapters
- The record is built in layers
- Identity
- The aim
- The small codes that change the money
Transcript
The complete text of the lesson. It is indexable, searchable and readable on its own, so nobody has to listen to get the content.
Introduction
The anatomy of the ILR. What is actually inside the Individualised Learner Record: the entities, how they nest, and which fields carry the funding.
The record is built in layers
The hierarchy matters because an error high up affects everything beneath it. A learner with the wrong ULN affects every aim they are on. An aim with the wrong funding model is assessed against the wrong rulebook entirely. The detail records are where most funding subtlety lives. They are small, easy to miss at enrolment, and rarely produce an obvious error when they are wrong: they simply change the money.
Identity: the fields that say who this is
The ULN is the join key for everything cross-provider and cross-year: prior attainment, prior learning, activity at another college. A wrong or newly created ULN for someone who already has one splits their record permanently. The learner reference number must be unique within your college for the funding year. Re-using it for a different person makes the return impossible to reconcile.
The aim: what is being delivered
Aim type is what distinguishes the programme aim from the components inside it. Getting aim type wrong changes how both funding and performance treat the record. The dates are the part people most often get wrong. The planned end date is the intention at the start. The actual end date records what happened. They are different fields answering different questions, and the actual end date should only be set when the aim genuinely ends.
The small codes that change the money
These are the funding and monitoring records. Because they change the calculation rather than the validity of the record, a wrong one usually produces no validation error at all. You find it in a funding report, or you do not find it. The source of funding is the most consequential of them for adult provision: it decides which authority the aim is claimed from and therefore which rules apply.
Read it instead
The anatomy of the ILRThe written module carries the same content at three depths, with the worked examples, the pitfalls and the sources.
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.