Guidance

Higher technical education skills injection fund 2: information for successful applicants

Updated 2 July 2025

Applies to England

The higher technical education (HTE) skills injection fund 2 closed for applications on 21 July 2023.

What the fund aims to do

The HTE skills injection fund 2 (the fund) had a total budget of £48.8 million, consisting of £29.8 million capital funding and £19 million resource funding for spend in the 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025 financial years. The spending window of the fund closed on 31 March 2025.

The aim of the fund is to grow capacity for providers to offer high-quality higher technical education though delivery of Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs). This will support the ambition to grow level 4 and 5 provision and increase learner uptake at this level of study.

The fund builds on the success of the HTE growth fund launched in 2021, which invested £14.5 million to support the uptake of Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs) and the HTE skills injection fund 1 launched in 2022, which invested £21 million to grow high-quality level 4 and 5 provision and HTQs.

Who the fund is for

Successful applicants to the HTE skills injection fund 2 included:

• institutes of technology (IoTs)
• further education (FE) colleges
• higher education (HE) institutions
• independent training providers
• consortia of eligible providers

To be eligible, at the point of application, providers (except those within IoT applications) had to meet one of the following conditions. They:

• had received an Ofsted rating of ‘requires improvement’ or better
• were registered with the Office for Students (OfS)

Only the lead partner in a consortium was required to meet these eligibility criteria. 

We applied additional uplifts in funding to applications from IoTs, and to providers in the bottom-third category of local authorities as ranked by proportion of 16- to 64-year-olds with qualifications at level 3 or above (as referenced in the published analysis).

Update to eligible courses

Providers are now able to deliver level 4 and 5 courses that are not HTQs, and count learner starts on those courses against their predicted learner number targets. The courses offered will need to be HTE courses at levels 4 and 5 and align to the funded occupational routes. Refer to the eligible occupation routes section for more information.

Eligibility to offer non-HTQ level 4 and 5 courses will be on a case-by-case basis and subject to receiving a written confirmation from the Department for Education (DfE). To be eligible, one of the following criteria needs to be met:

• providers can demonstrate a link between the additional level 4 and 5 course and the skills needs assessment for the 10 priority sectors identified by Skills England
• providers can evidence there is no available HTQ directly mapping to the occupational standard(s) within the occupational route the provider can deliver to meet their grant obligations to deliver learners

Contract variations

To request a contract variation to enable delivery of the replacement course or additional courses into scope for your contract, follow these instructions:

1. Download the ‘Higher technical education skills injection fund 2 contract variation form’.
2. Fill in one form for each funded occupational route you want to change.
3. Add the required details, including the new qualification or qualifications you want to add to your contract.
4. Save the form and email it to team.highertechnicaleducation@education.gov.uk.

Your total learner number profile against your contract must remain the same against each occupational route. Any changes to your total funded learner targets against each occupational route will trigger a clawback of funds, as your learner profile is directly proportionate to your funding allocation.

Eligible occupational routes

The fund supports delivery of courses in 13 occupational routes with course start dates in the 2024 to 2025 academic year (for year 1) and the 2025 to 2026 academic year (for year 2). Providers have up to 4 academic years to roll out courses from the start dates set against each occupational route. This 4-year delivery window will close in the 2027 to 2028 academic year (for year 1) and the 2028 to 2029 academic year (for year 2).

Learner recruitment performance against predicted targets will be measured against the most successful academic years’ enrolment for each occupational route across the 4-year delivery window.

The qualifications that providers plan to deliver must align with the occupational routes and the timings outlined here.

Year 1 providers, from the 2024 to 2025 to the 2027 to 2028 academic year

Providers can deliver HTQs or an eligible alternative qualification (refer to the update to eligible courses section) mapping to the following occupational routes:

• digital
• construction and the built environment
• health and science
• business and administration
• education and early years
• engineering and manufacturing
• legal, finance and accounting

Year 2 providers: from the 2025 to 2026 to the 2028 to 2029 academic year

Providers can deliver HTQs, or an eligible alternative qualification (refer to the update to eligible courses section) mapping to the following occupational routes:

• agriculture, environmental and animal care
• catering and hospitality
• creative and design
• care services
• sales, marketing and procurement
• protective services

A list of HTQs is available.

Monitoring and evaluation

Spend activity and monitoring related to spend have concluded, as the fund spend window closed on the 31 March 2025. Providers have returned their final certificate of expenditure (Annex Gi) which will be used to calculate underspend amounts. All unspent funds will be recovered in the 2025 to 2026 financial year.

Providers must return monitoring data setting out learner starts on eligible courses up to the end of the delivery window. This assists with an evaluation of the fund in terms of course outputs and value generated. We will request this information from providers in October and February in each academic year across the delivery window.

Clawback of funds

In accordance with the terms of the funding agreements, providers are subject to clawback of funds in certain circumstances. These measures are in place to ensure value for money and that funds are used in compliance with the agreed objectives. We will claw back funds in the following circumstances:

• funds have been mis-spent and not used in accordance with grant agreements
• funds remain unspent at the end of the grant period (31 March 2025)
• a provider does not deliver an approved Higher Technical Qualification or eligible level 4 and 5 qualifications as agreed
• a provider fails to reach 80% of their predicted learner number target in each occupational route (for this performance-related clawback, we will claw back the difference between the achieved numbers and 80% of the predicted numbers)

We will process the performance-related clawbacks at the end of the delivery window in the 2029 to 2030 financial year. If a provider indicates an intention to end delivery before reaching the 80% learner recruitment threshold in their funded occupational routes, we will process the performance-related clawback at the relevant point in the 4-academic-year delivery window.

Performance will be assessed as a total of learner starts across all eligible courses in an occupational route. We will count the best learner enrolment figures in each occupational route in a single year over the 4-year period (rather than a cumulative total of learners over the 4 years). 

For consortium and IoT applications, we will liaise with the lead provider to establish the best years’ result for each occupational route across the partnership. This will be assessed against the predicted target to measure performance.

We will cross-reference submitted learner number data against higher-level learner datasets from the Higher Education Statistics Agency and Individualised Learner Records as well as information from Student Loans Company before processing performance clawbacks. Providers have a responsibility to keep their information against these datasets updated accurately to aid learner reporting and cross-referencing processes.

Important dates

These dates indicate the expected timeline. We will keep providers informed of any changes.

Date	Activity
November 2023 to March 2025	Providers spend allocated capital and resource funding and provide monitoring reports
September 2024	Occupational routes in scope for year 1 begin delivery
October 2024 and February 2025	Providers receive an email request for learner starts in the 2024 to 2025 academic year
September 2025	Delivery in the 2025 to 2026 academic year begins. Occupational routes in scope for year 2 begin delivery
October 2025 and February 2026	Providers receive an email request for learner starts in the 2025 to 2026 academic year
September 2026	Delivery in the 2026 to 2027 academic year begins
October 2026 and February 2027	Providers receive an email request for learner starts in the 2026 to 2027 academic year
September 2027	Delivery in the 2027 to 2028 academic year begins
October 2027 and February 2028	Providers receive an email request for learner starts in the 2027 to 2028 academic year
July 2028	The year 1 delivery window closes at the end of the 2027 to 2028 academic year
September 2028	Delivery in the 2028 to 2029 academic year begins
October 2028 and February 2029	Providers receive an email request for learner starts in the 2028 to 2029 academic year
July 2029	The year 2 delivery window closes at the end of the 2028 to 2029 academic year
December 2029	Performance-related clawback for learner shortfall against predicted targets

Contact details

If you have any questions, email team.highertechnicaleducation@education.gov.uk.