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Period 9, April · 2026–27

R09

The last comfortable return before year end. Anything structural you want fixed this year should be started here.

Deadline6 May 2027, 18:00231 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 April and the last full month before the year-end position starts to be fixed.

What each role should do

MIS or ILR officer

Before

  • Begin the year-end data cleanse rather than waiting for the final returns.

After

  • Produce the year-end issues list with owners and dates.

Head or director of MIS

Before

  • Agree the year-end timetable with curriculum, Finance and quality.

After

  • Confirm the year-end plan is owned and realistic.

Checks before you submit

  1. Start the year-end cleanse: outcomes, withdrawals, dates, evidence gaps.
  2. Run validation locally before submitting, and work the errors by rule rather than record by record.
  3. Check learners still recorded as in learning whose planned end date has passed.
  4. Check aims that have ended with no outcome recorded.
  5. Reconcile the funding report for the period against your own expectation, and explain any movement since last period.
  6. Confirm withdrawals notified by curriculum this month have actually been recorded.

Sign-off

  • MIS confirms the year-end plan is agreed.

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 year-end plan.

What commonly goes wrong

  • Year-end preparation started at R12, leaving no time to correct anything substantial.

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.