Funding stream
Devolved adult funding
Adult skills funding devolved to combined and strategic authorities, where a learner's home postcode determines which authority's rules, rates and reporting apply.
ILR funding model 35 or 38Not to be confused with ASF
Understand it
Adult Skills Fund: earning, evidencing and reconciling
An allocation you have to earn, with eligibility that must be evidenced before you claim, and a reconciliation at the end that can reduce what you keep.
Read itDevolved adult funding: whose rules apply
The learner's home postcode decides which authority funds their adult skills learning, and therefore which rules, rates and reporting apply.
Read itThe rules in one place
Each statement is labelled so you can tell an official requirement from our explanation of one.
Adult Skills Fund eligibility depends on the learner's age, residency and circumstances, and the provider must hold evidence of eligibility before funding is claimed.
For adult skills provision, the learner's home postcode determines whether their funding is national or devolved to a combined or strategic authority, and therefore which rules apply.
When it goes wrong
An adult learner appears to be funded by the wrong authority
The learner's recorded source of funding does not match what their home postcode implies, so the aim may be claimed from the wrong funder, under the wrong rules.
A funded learner has no eligibility evidence on file
Funding has been claimed for the learner, but the college cannot produce the evidence that they were eligible for it. The claim may be entirely correct and still fail, because at audit the evidence is the claim.
An aim is on the ILR but generates no funding
The aim validates and appears on the ILR, but generates no earnings. Validation and funding are different tests: a record can be perfectly valid and still not qualify for funding.
See it play out
Check and evidence it
Monthly return readiness
The checks to run before every ordinary return. Short, repeatable, and the reason the consequential returns are manageable.
R14 final return readiness
Preparation for the final hard close, where the funding, the achievement rates and the audit population are all fixed at once.
Year-end close readiness
The wider close programme that runs from the spring, of which the final return is the last step.
Adult Skills Fund claim readiness
Checks before signing an adult skills funding claim, so the signature rests on a reconciliation rather than on trust.
Funding audit readiness
What to have in place before an audit, across every stream. Most of it is the routine you should be running anyway.
Devolved provision assurance
Checks where adult provision is funded by a combined or strategic authority rather than nationally.
Enrolment quality review
A front-door review, which is where most funding-critical data is captured and where errors are cheapest to prevent.
Monthly data quality review
The standing data quality review, separate from the return checks, focused on trends rather than individual records.
New funding year setup
What to do before the first enrolments of a new funding year, rather than before the first return.
Governance assurance pack
What a governing body should see about funding, so assurance rests on measures rather than on reassurance.
New MIS starter induction
What a new member of an MIS team should be able to do, and by when. Not a funding control, but the thing that most often goes missing.
Terms you will meet
Official sources for this stream
These are the documents that govern this stream for the funding year. Rates, thresholds and exact conditions come from them, not from here.
Content reused from GOV.UK is Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence. FEFunding is not endorsed by the Department for Education.