Correspondence

ESFA Update further education: 13 March 2024

Published 13 March 2024

Applies to England

Information: 16 to 19 funding allocation statements for 2024 to 2025

Last week we issued 16 to 19 allocation statements for most school and academy sixth forms, and this week we’ve started to upload them for further education colleges. We expect to issue at least 97% of allocations by the end of March. There may be a very small number of allocations that we will issue in April and we will contact you by 27 March if this applies to your institution. 

You will receive a notification once your allocation statement is available and you can find it on Document exchange in the ‘documents received from ESFA’ section. We have included a breakdown of our calculation in your statement and have published guidance to help you understand your statement. 

If you have questions after reading our guidance, or if there’s anything else you need help with, you can find more support in our customer help centre.

Information: Additional teachers’ pension funding from April 2024

The Department for Education (DfE) has secured £1.25 billion to support eligible settings with the increased teachers’ pension scheme employer contribution rate in the financial year 2024 to 2025.  

This will mean additional funding of: 

• £923.7 million for mainstream schools 
• £136.4 million for high needs 
• £61.2 million for 16 to 19 education 
• £84.8 million for further education 
• £34.7 million for early years 
• £9.3 million to local authorities for centrally employed teachers, including those employed in local authority-based music hubs 

We have published the details of additional funding for mainstream schools, high needs and local authorities with centrally employed teachers. 

We will distribute additional funding through existing teachers’ pension employer contribution grants for schools and academies with sixth forms and further education settings. We aim to update our schools and academies with sixth forms information by the end of April 2024. 

Additional funding for early years is already included in published core rates for 2024 to 2025.

Information: The Customer Help Portal is now live

You can now contact DfE and the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) using the contact form within the Customer Help Centre.

For more information on the portal, its benefits and how to use it, see our help centre articles:   

• Introducing the Customer Help Portal 
• The Customer Help Portal User Guide

Information: The technical funding guide for ESFA Individualised Learner Record funded skills bootcamps

We have published version 2 of the technical funding guide for ESFA-funded skills bootcamps. The main change from version 1 is that we have added information about the new heavy goods vehicles (HGV) skills bootcamps that could start from February 2025. 

The update to the guidance covers: 

• HGV and how it works 
• how we use the individualised learner record (ILR) to calculate funding for HGV 

For further information please contact us via the help centre.

Information: Adult Education Budget (soon to be Adult Skills Fund) webinar

As part of the skills reform, the Adult Education Budget (AEB) will be transitioning to the Adult Skills Fund in the 2024 to 2025 academic year.  

In ESFA-funded areas, the transition to the Adult Skills Fund will include new funding changes such as replacing Community Learning with Tailored Learning and the new AEB funding rates.  

We are hosting a webinar at midday, Wednesday 27 March for existing ESFA AEB contracts and grant agreements, to provide an overview of the forthcoming changes in the 2024 to 2025 academic year. 

Register to attend.