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Period 3, October · 2026–27

R03

The return before the one that sets next year's 16 to 19 allocation. Everything you fix here is one less thing to fix under pressure in December.

Deadline5 November 2026, 18:0049 days left

Preparation

Preparation for this return normally starts about 12 days out.

Readiness checklist

Generate a checklist scoped to this return, your streams and your role.

Generate it

This date follows the published monthly pattern and is marked provisional in the Academy until it has been reconciled against the official timetable. Confirm it against Data Collection Timetable 2026 to 2027 before planning around it.

Funding year2026–27Awaiting verificationSee the sourcesReport an issue

What this return drives

  • Earnings for October and the last clean opportunity to correct enrolment data before the December return.

What each role should do

MIS or ILR officer

Before

  • Start the R04 preparation now rather than in December: run the checks you would run for R04 against this return.
  • Resolve any learner whose record has been open with unresolved queries since enrolment.

After

  • Produce a list of everything that must be right by R04 and agree owners for each item.

Head or director of MIS

Before

  • Agree the R04 timetable with curriculum and Finance, working backwards from the deadline.

After

  • Confirm every R04 action has a named owner and a date.

Curriculum manager or head of department

Before

  • Confirm every learner who has stopped attending has been notified to MIS with a leaving date.

After

  • Check your area's learner list and confirm it matches who is actually in your classes.

Checks before you submit

  1. Run the full R04 check set as a dry run.
  2. Check learners who have stopped attending but have no withdrawal recorded.
  3. Run validation locally before submitting, and work the errors by rule rather than record by record.
  4. Check learners still recorded as in learning whose planned end date has passed.
  5. Check aims that have ended with no outcome recorded.
  6. Reconcile the funding report for the period against your own expectation, and explain any movement since last period.
  7. Confirm withdrawals notified by curriculum this month have actually been recorded.

Sign-off

  • MIS confirms the R04 preparation plan is in place and owned.

After submission

  1. Download and keep the funding reports for the period. They are your record of what the submission earned.
  2. Circulate the reconciliation position to Finance, with the explanation for any movement.
  3. Log any issue you could not resolve in time, so it is picked up rather than forgotten next month.
  4. Circulate the R04 preparation plan with named owners and dates.

What commonly goes wrong

  • Learners who left in the first weeks still showing as continuing.
  • Enrolment queries raised in September still unresolved in October.

Each of these has a full diagnostic in the error and assurance lookup, with the causes, the investigation, the fix and the control that prevents it.

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.

Data collection timetable 2026 to 2027 (opens in a new tab)

Department for EducationOfficial technical document2026–27Awaiting first verification

Content reused from GOV.UK is Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence. FEFunding is not endorsed by the Department for Education.