Adult Skills Fund: earning, evidencing and reconciling

Adult skills funding comes as an allocation: an amount you can earn in the year.

You earn it by delivering and recording eligible learning. If you deliver less than the allocation, you can lose some of it. If you deliver more, you are not automatically paid for the extra.

This asymmetry is the defining feature of the stream, and it is why monthly reconciliation matters here more than anywhere else. Under-delivery identified in February can be managed; under-delivery identified in July cannot.

Reconciliation arrangements, including any tolerance, are set out in the funding rules for the funding year and should never be assumed to have carried over.

Provision runs under ILR funding model 38, with earnings accruing monthly against the allocation and settled through the funding-claim process at the points set out in the rules for the year.

Tailored learning runs separately under funding model 11, against its own allocation, and must not be blended with formula-funded delivery.

Not every adult can be funded for every course. Eligibility depends on age, residency, circumstances and what they have already achieved.

You need the evidence before you claim, not afterwards. At audit, the evidence is the claim.

Full funding, co-funding and the various entitlements each have their own conditions. Recording the wrong basis is a funding error even where the learner was eligible on some other basis.

The most common audit finding in this stream is not ineligibility. It is eligibility that was genuinely established and cannot be demonstrated because the evidence was checked visually and never retained.

Establish and record the basis of eligibility at enrolment, capture the evidence in a searchable store, and reflect the basis in the learner and learning delivery funding and monitoring records.

Sample monthly rather than annually. A gap found in month three is fixable; a gap found at audit is a recovery.

For adult skills, where the learner lives decides who funds them.

If they live in a devolved area, that authority's rules apply, not the national ones. It does not matter where the college is or where the teaching happens.

Because devolved areas have expanded across successive funding years, a postcode that was national last year may be devolved this year. Review the position at the start of each year, before the first enrolments.

The position that matters is the one at the aim start date, not the learner's current address.

Derive the source of funding from the home postcode automatically rather than entering it manually, and validate the postcode against evidence at enrolment.

Where a learner falls to a devolved authority, apply that authority's rules, rates, eligibility conditions and reporting requirements, which may differ materially from the national position.