Correspondence

DfE Update further education: 8 October 2025

Published 8 October 2025

Applies to England

1. Action: Your final funding claim for 2024 to 2025

The final funding claim window will open at 9am on Tuesday 28 October 2025.

Submit your final funding claim by 5pm on Friday 31 October 2025 using the form on submit learner data. The funding claims user guide will help you get your claim right.

Sign your claim

Your principal or delegated authority must sign your claim digitally on manage your education and skills funding by 5pm on Tuesday 4 November 2025.

Providers with only a 16 to 19 allocation, do not need to submit a claim and will find the 16 to 19 delivery section ready for the principal or delegated authority to sign off.

Submit your claim

You will need to submit a claim if you receive funds through these contracts:

• grant funded - Department for Education (DfE) funded adult skills fund (adult skills, tailored learning, funding for innovative provision, and level 3 free courses for jobs offer)
• grant funded - advanced learner loans bursary

We will review claims to ensure they are substantiated by the data you have submitted in your individualised learner record and present value for money.

Once you have submitted your final funding claim on submit learner data, you will also be able to view it on manage your education and skills funding.

2. Action: Record your T Level data accurately

We use your autumn census or R04 data to calculate T Level under-and over-delivery and therefore your clawback or growth payments.

You must record this data correctly because we will not accept business cases to change these numbers. Use the checklist in our guidance to help ensure accuracy.

Errors may lead to:

• unexpected funding recovery or reduced growth payments during reconciliation in early 2026
• reduced funding allocations for 2026 to 2027 because we use your carry-in data to produce next year’s allocations

Return deadlines

• Autumn census: Wednesday 29 October 2025
• R04 return: Thursday 4 December 2025

Don’t wait until the deadline. Submitting early gives you time to review and amend your data.

3. Information: Updated requirements and guidance for the financial health assessment of organisations

We have published an updated document, DfE’s approach to assessing the financial health of organisations.

This sets out what is required by DfE from organisations to perform a financial health assessment for independent training providers, special post-16 institutions and non-maintained special schools.

This update also provides further support and advice for organisations to help them make timely and accurate submissions.

A list of the main changes can be found under ‘What has changed in this edition’ within the document.

It guides organisations through the assessment process, what figures are used by the DfE in calculating the financial ratios, and the additional financial information we review from the financial statements.

We recommend relevant organisations review this to familiarise themselves with the requirement and changes.

This document is effective immediately and replaces the previous document issued by Education and Skills Funding Agency.

4. Reminder: Care to Learn and 16 to 19 Bursary Fund digital form

The Care to Learn scheme and the 16 to 19 Bursary Fund, defined vulnerable groups element, funding claim forms are now live. The deadline for your submission is 5pm on 12 November 2025.

We’ve received some enquiries from maintained special schools about accessing the form to claim 16 to 19 Bursary Funding. These institutions, including community special and foundation special schools, must contact their local authority who will submit a claim on their behalf.

We will not accept funding claims that miss the closing date. These must be submitted in the second claims window.

We have published guidance to help you complete your submission which includes the link to the form.