Sixth form college academy converters: contracting and data
This guidance is for sixth form colleges who are converting to academy status and hold contracts for Apprenticeships, Advanced Learner Loans or Adult Education Budget.
Summary
This note clarifies your post-16 contract arrangements and how you return your data.
This replaces any previous guidance relating to individualised learner record (ILR) submissions for sixth form colleges converting to academy status.
Expiry or review date
This guidance will be reviewed before August 2024.
Who is this publication for?
This guidance is for sixth form colleges who are converting to academy status and hold contracts for Apprenticeships, Advanced Learner Loans or Adult Education Budget.
Main points
Where a college converts during the academic year, they must continue to return their ILR using their predecessor college UKPRN for the remainder of the funding year, with the exception of Apprenticeships.
Sixth form colleges who had academy status at 1 August
You should complete steps 1, 2 and 9 below at the point of conversion.
1: Ensure you set up an IDAMS super user and contract authoriser role on Manage Your Education and Skills Funding (MYESF) against your trust UKPRN.
2: You must provide your academy bank details even if they are the same as the predecessor college.
3: Sign contract(s) issued to your trust via MYESF. The trust allocation appendices will show a total of the academy allocations and additional appendices will show the ring-fenced allocations for each academy.
4: You will need to set up your academy(s) in Submit learner data and complete ILR and claims, where appropriate, for each academy using their individual UKPRNs. Please complete the ‘UKPRN in previous year’ field and the ‘learner reference number in previous year’ field if necessary. You can find more details about how and when to do this in the ILR guidance.
5: If you have an Advanced Learner Loans facility, you will need to ensure that the legal name, address and primary contact details, including an email address, have been added to both the Trust and Academy accounts on UKRLP. This is required by the Student Loans Company to set up your account on the SLC Provider Portal.
6: If you are making a growth request following your conversion, please use your academy UKPRN.
7: We will make payments to your academy bank account as stated in your provide your academy bank details form.
8: We will calculate all reconciliation, assurance and achievement rates using your academy data.
9: If you hold a levy apprenticeship facility, this will cease at the point of conversion as the college will be removed from the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers (RoATP):
- 9.1: To continue to provide this facility, you will need to successfully apply for the RoATP as the Trust. Once onboarding is complete and commitments have been transferred, you will need to return an additional ILR using your Trust UKPRN containing only levy funded learners.
Sixth form colleges who converted to academy status in-year (September to July of the funding year converted).
1: Submit accurate ILR data for the month preceding college closure using your predecessor college UKPRN.
2: Ensure you set up an IDAMS super user and contract authoriser role on Manager Your Education and Skills Funding (MYESF) against your trust UKPRN.
3: You must provide your academy bank details even if they are the same as the predecessor college.
4: Sign contract(s) issued to your trust via MYEFS. The trust allocation appendices will show a total of the academy allocations and additional appendices will show the ring-fenced allocations for each academy:
- 4.1: Your predecessor college will receive a notification reducing their allocation to the total at the point of conversion (profile allocation for pay on profile and actuals for pay on actuals); the remainder will be allocated to your opening academy.
- 4.2: The exception to this is loans facility contracts, where a zero allocation will be issued to your academy for the remainder of the academic year and the predecessor allocation will remain.
5: With the exception of Apprenticeships, when making ILR returns and claims, please continue to use your predecessor college UKPRN until the end of the academic year if you have converted during the academic year.
6: Therefore, it is more beneficial to convert at the beginning rather than during the academic year due to the additional complexities involved with coverting during the academic year.
7: If you have converted during the academic year, then from the start of the following academic year, you should switch over to using your new academy UKPRN. We will ensure that splitting the allocation does not result in incorrect capping.
8: For Apprenticeships (ACT1), the predecessor college UKPRN should stop being used for the apprentices at the point that they are no longer delivering training and the new academy UKPRN should start being used to record them once they have agreed funding through the Apprenticeship Service.
9: For Apprenticeships (ACT2), the providers will be instructed to what point and value they can claim funding through their contract.
10: If you are making a growth request following your conversion, please use your academy UKPRN.
11: We will make payments to your academy bank account as stated in the provide your academy bank details form.
12: We will calculate all reconciliation, assurance and achievement rates using your college data.
13: From 1 August, following your conversion, you will receive an academy funding allocation. You will find it helpful to read sixth form colleges who had academy status at 1 August 2017 and 1 August in subsequent years section.
14: If you hold a levy apprenticeship facility this will cease at the point of conversion as the college will be removed from the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers (RoATP):
- 14.1: To continue to provide this facility you will need to successfully apply for the RoATP as the Trust. Once onboarding is complete and commitments have been transferred you will need to return an additional ILR using your Trust UKPRN containing only levy funded learners.