Audio lesson · 8 minutes
Planned hours
Planned hours set the funding band and therefore the rate for the whole year. What may be counted, what must be evidenced, and how to reconcile hours to a timetable.
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Chapters
- What can be counted
- Evidencing the hours
Transcript
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Introduction
Planned hours: what counts and how to evidence it. Planned hours set the funding band and therefore the rate for the whole year. What may be counted, what must be evidenced, and how to reconcile hours to a timetable.
What can be counted
Two categories are recorded: planned learning hours for qualification delivery, and planned employability, enrichment and pastoral hours for the rest. The conditions on what may be counted are set out in the funding rules for the funding year and are more specific than most people assume. Activity that is not planned, not timetabled or not education-related does not count, however valuable it is.
Evidencing the hours
The reconciliation itself is the evidence. Produce it once a year, before the December return, keep it, and update it after any material timetable change. Pay particular attention to students sitting just above a band threshold. That is where a small hours error has the largest funding consequence and where testing concentrates.
Where hours go wrong in practice
The template problem is the most common and the easiest to spot: every student on a programme carries an identical figure, which almost never reflects reality once enrolment patterns, resits and individual timetables are taken into account. The withdrawal problem is the most common cause of a reconciliation failing at audit. A session is dropped after half term, the timetable changes, and nothing prompts anybody to revisit the recorded hours. It feels like a timetabling decision rather than a funding one. The third problem is subtler. Activity that is genuinely valuable to students is not automatically fundable hours: the rules set conditions, and activity that is not planned, not timetabled or not education-related does not count however much it benefits the learner. Students sitting just above a band threshold deserve individual attention, because that is where a small hours error produces the largest funding consequence and where testing naturally concentrates.
Read it instead
Planned hours: what counts and how to evidence itThe written module carries the same content at three depths, with the worked examples, the pitfalls and the sources.
Sources
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