Topic
Qualification achievement rates: how your data becomes your results
Achievement rates are calculated from the ILR. Understanding the cohort is what turns an unexplained rate into an explainable one.
Enough detail to do the job and hold a sensible conversation with MIS or Finance.
- Official requirement: Stated by the official funding document named in the sources for this page.
- FEFunding explanation: Our plain-English explanation. Helpful, but the official document is the rule.
- Worked example: An illustration of how the rule applies in one situation. Not a universal rule.
- Recommended good practice: Operational advice from FEFunding. Not itself a funding requirement.
It is calculated from your return
Achievement rates are not collected separately. They are worked out from the same ILR you submit every month.
So data quality is not a separate topic from performance. It is the same topic.
The calculation forms a cohort of aims expected to complete in the year and measures achievement within it.
That means three data problems move the published rate directly: aims with no outcome, aims left open past their planned end date, and planned end dates that put an aim in the wrong year.
Qualification achievement rates are calculated from submitted ILR data. Data-quality problems in the return become published performance problems.
Completion status records whether a learner is continuing, has completed, has withdrawn or has temporarily withdrawn. Outcome records what the learner achieved. They answer different questions and both are needed.
The rate is calculated from the closed return at the final return of the year, using the published methodology for the year.
Take the cohort definition from the published methodology rather than assuming it matches the college's own view of who was taught. Most unexplained variance is in the denominator.
Understanding the cohort
The rate is not simply everyone you taught this year. It is the aims that were expected to finish this year.
That is why a college's own view of its results often differs from the published one.
Reconciling your own cohort against the calculated one, and accounting for every difference, is the exercise that explains most of the gap. Often nothing is wrong: the two are counting different things.
Where the difference is caused by planned end dates that do not reflect the actual programme, that is a data problem and it is fixable while the year is open.
Rebuild the cohort from your own data using the published methodology and reconcile line by line. Retain the reconciliation: it is the basis of any conversation about the published figure.
Model the rate from live data each term rather than waiting for the published position, so curriculum areas can still influence it.
Improving the rate honestly
There are two ways to improve an achievement rate. One is to teach better. The other is to record accurately what actually happened.
Most colleges have material gains available from the second before they need the first.
Recording missing outcomes, closing aims that should be closed, and setting realistic planned end dates are all legitimate and often substantial.
Moving planned end dates to shift aims into a different cohort, without a genuine change in the programme, is not. The distinction is whether the data change reflects a real change.
When a withdrawal is recorded changes both the funding earned and whether the aim counts in the achievement rate. Recording a withdrawal late is not a neutral administrative delay.
Prioritise by volume: the missing-outcome count is usually the largest single lever and is entirely a recording issue.
Do this work before the final return. After it, the rate for the year is fixed.
R14 is the final hard close for the funding year. Post-close, the year's earnings, the qualification achievement rate population and the audit sampling frame are drawn from the closed return.
Worked examples
Worked example
Explaining a gap
A college's modelled rate is six percentage points below its own expectation.
- Reconcile the cohort. Three points of the gap are cohort definition: aims the college was not counting.
- Missing outcomes. Two points are aims that ended with no outcome recorded.
- Open aims. One point is aims left open past their planned end date.
- Act. Three points are explainable and stay. Three points are recoverable and are fixed before the close.
A six-point mystery becomes three points of explanation and three points of action.
Illustrative figures.
Common pitfalls
Waiting for the published rate
What goes wrong: The rate is first examined when it is published.
Consequence: By then the year is closed and nothing can be changed.
Prevention: Model it termly from live data and act while the year is open.
What this means for your role
Data, BI or performance analyst
Most of the surprise is in the denominator.
- Rebuild the cohort from the published methodology and reconcile it before investigating the rate.
Curriculum manager or head of department
Recording results promptly is worth measurable percentage points.
- Record outcomes as they arrive rather than in batches.
See it play out
Scenario
Results arrive after the final return has closed
A batch of awarding organisation results for last year arrives in November, after the final return closed. What can be done?
Work through itScenario
An achievement is recorded before the result is confirmed
A tutor is confident a learner has passed and asks for the achievement to be recorded before the awarding organisation confirms it.
Work through itKnowledge check
Knowledge check
Achievement rates
3 questions. Nothing is recorded unless you are signed in, and there is no time limit.
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.