Updates
What changed, and what to do about it
Guidance changes during a funding year as well as between years. This is where a change to an official document becomes a change to the Academy, and where you can see what that means for your role.
Moving to 2026–27
The Academy holds reviewed content for 2026–27 and 2025–26. It never presents one funding year's rules as another's: a page states its year, the assistant refuses to answer for a year it has no content for, and any comparison between years is labelled as a comparison.
Which year's rules apply depends on the funding stream. Apprenticeships follow the funding rules for the year the apprenticeship started: an apprentice who started in July under 2025–26 stays on those rules (apprenticeship funding rules, paragraphs 2 and 3).
The 16 to 19 funding rules and the Adult Skills Fund funding rules each cover a funding year, 1 August to 31 July. A 16 to 19 or Adult Skills Fund learner who started in July and carries on after 1 August is covered by the 2026–27 rules for that year's delivery. The previous year is kept rather than removed because earlier apprenticeship starts still depend on it, and because its returns are still being finished.
How a change reaches this site
- Detected. The source registry is checked on a schedule. A document whose content has changed produces a new version alongside the old one, never an overwrite.
- Impact assessed. The change is traced through the canonical claims to every page, diagnostic, scenario and checklist that depends on it.
- Reviewed by a person. A material change to a funding rule is never published automatically. The system can draft the impact; it cannot publish an interpretation.
- Published, with a note. Where the meaning has changed for a reader, the page's update history records it and it appears here.
Academy change history
18 September 2026Material change
How further education funding actually works: First published for 2026-27.
Watching the sources
The registry and the current verification state of every document are public, including the ones we have not been able to confirm recently.