Planned hours: what counts and how to evidence it

Planned hours are the hours of planned, timetabled, education-related activity for a student in the year.

They include qualification teaching and other planned activity that supports the programme, such as work experience and tutorial.

The hours have to be planned, timetabled and something the college can show actually happened.

Two categories are recorded: planned learning hours for qualification delivery, and planned employability, enrichment and pastoral hours for the rest.

The conditions on what may be counted are set out in the funding rules for the funding year and are more specific than most people assume. Activity that is not planned, not timetabled or not education-related does not count, however valuable it is.

Check the funding rules for the funding year for the current treatment of each category of activity before including it. The treatment of individual activity types has changed between years.

Record the hours from the timetabling system rather than from a programme template, and retain the reconciliation as the evidence for the figure recorded.

The evidence for planned hours is the timetable, plus something showing the timetabled activity actually took place.

A figure that cannot be reconciled to a timetable is a funding risk, however reasonable it looks.

The reconciliation itself is the evidence. Produce it once a year, before the December return, keep it, and update it after any material timetable change.

Pay particular attention to students sitting just above a band threshold. That is where a small hours error has the largest funding consequence and where testing concentrates.

Produce the reconciliation at programme level and at student level for any student within a small margin of a band threshold.

Where enrichment or other non-qualification activity is withdrawn mid-year, revisit the hours: this is one of the most common causes of an unreconcilable figure at audit.

Three patterns account for most planned hours problems, and all three are preventable.

• Hours set from a programme template rather than from what each student is actually timetabled for.
• Timetabled activity withdrawn during the year, with the hours never revisited.
• Activity counted that does not meet the conditions in the funding rules.

The template problem is the most common and the easiest to spot: every student on a programme carries an identical figure, which almost never reflects reality once enrolment patterns, resits and individual timetables are taken into account.

The withdrawal problem is the most common cause of a reconciliation failing at audit. A session is dropped after half term, the timetable changes, and nothing prompts anybody to revisit the recorded hours. It feels like a timetabling decision rather than a funding one.

The third problem is subtler. Activity that is genuinely valuable to students is not automatically fundable hours: the rules set conditions, and activity that is not planned, not timetabled or not education-related does not count however much it benefits the learner.

Students sitting just above a band threshold deserve individual attention, because that is where a small hours error produces the largest funding consequence and where testing naturally concentrates.

Build three standing checks. First, a variance report showing programmes where every student carries an identical hours figure. Second, a trigger on any timetable change that flags the affected students for an hours review. Third, a list of students within a small margin of each band threshold, reviewed individually.

Retain each review as part of the reconciliation. The reconciliation is the evidence for the hours claimed, so its history is as valuable as its current state.