Period 6, January · 2026–27
R06
The mid-year point. Enough of the year has been delivered for the trajectory to be real, and enough remains for the position to be changed.
Preparation
Preparation for this return normally starts about 14 days out.
Readiness checklist
Generate a checklist scoped to this return, your streams and your role.
Generate itThis 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.
What this return drives
- Earnings for January.
- A common mid-year reference point for adult skills funding claims and for the mid-year funding conversation.
What each role should do
MIS or ILR officer
Before
- Produce a clean mid-year position: no learners in learning past their planned end date, no ended aims without outcomes.
- Check adult skills eligibility recording and evidence for a sample of learners.
After
- Support the funding claim with a reconciliation the claim signatory can actually follow.
Finance director or finance manager
Before
- Forecast the year end from delivery to date and planned delivery to come.
- Identify whether under-delivery or over-delivery is emerging, while there is still time to act.
After
- Agree the management action on any emerging variance rather than noting it.
Funding or compliance officer
Before
- Sample eligibility evidence for adult learners and fix any gap now rather than at audit.
After
- Report the sample result and the actions arising.
Checks before you submit
- Adult skills eligibility evidence is present for a sample of learners.
- Learning support claims have the assessment, provision and cost records behind them.
- The mid-year earnings position reconciles to expectation.
- Run validation locally before submitting, and work the errors by rule rather than record by record.
- Check learners still recorded as in learning whose planned end date has passed.
- Check aims that have ended with no outcome recorded.
- Reconcile the funding report for the period against your own expectation, and explain any movement since last period.
- Confirm withdrawals notified by curriculum this month have actually been recorded.
Sign-off
- Finance confirms the mid-year position and the forecast to year end.
- MIS confirms the data behind the claim is as clean as it can be made.
After submission
- Download and keep the funding reports for the period. They are your record of what the submission earned.
- Circulate the reconciliation position to Finance, with the explanation for any movement.
- Log any issue you could not resolve in time, so it is picked up rather than forgotten next month.
- Agree the management response to the emerging year-end position.
What commonly goes wrong
- A funding claim signed off without anyone reconciling it to the funding report.
- Learning support claimed with no assessment record behind it.
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.
Content reused from GOV.UK is Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence. FEFunding is not endorsed by the Department for Education.