Guidance

Technical specification: further education for young people

The technical specification for the 16 to 19 funding calculation.

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 27 October 2021
• Last updated: 28 August 2026
  Show all updates

  1. 28 August 2026

     We have added the technical specification for further education for 2026 to 2027. We have removed the guidance document for 2024 to 2025, but you can find this in the National Archives.

  2. 12 September 2025

     We have added the technical specification for further education for 2025 to 2026. We have removed the guidance document for 2023 to 2024, however you can find this in our national archives.

  3. 16 August 2024

     We have added the technical specification: further education for young people for 2024 to 2025. We have removed the guidance documents for 2017 to 2018 through to 2022 to 2023, however you can find these in our national archives.

  4. 10 November 2021

     We have created this page for the technical guides previously published for academic years 2017 to 2018 and 2018 to 2019.

  5. 27 October 2021

     First published.

Applies to England

Documents

16 to 19 funding calculation for 2026 to 2027: technical specification

PDF, 1.11 MB, 90 pages

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If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email alternative.formats@education.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

16 to 19 funding calculation for 2025 to 2026: technical specification

PDF, 1.08 MB, 89 pages

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email alternative.formats@education.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Details

This guidance outlines the technical specification that the Department for Education (DfE) has used for calculating further education funding.

The ‘16 to 19 funding calculation technical specification’ documents are not accessible because their presentation needs to align with Oracle Intelligent Advisor’s policy modelling and automation software for developers. As a result, they contain images of text, have hard-to-read text-to-background contrast and use colour to convey meaning. This means they do not meet web content accessibility guidelines success criteria:

• 1.4.5 images of text
• 1.4.3: contrast
• 1.4.1: use of colour