ESFA subcontracting standard

The Department for Education (DfE) has published the results of a consultation into sub-contracting for learners over 16 years of age. 

Subcontracting education and training for learners over 16 is common. DfE wanted to review how they oversee the practice to:

• strengthen our monitoring and improve the assessment of risk
• get involved more quickly and decisively when needed
• make the rules and requirements clearer across post 16 funding
• reduce the volume of subcontracting overall
• stop subcontracting undertaken only for financial reasons
• keep subcontracting that meets special needs and improves access and opportunities for disadvantaged learners

ESFA, as part of new measures, will implement a subcontracting standard and reduce, significantly, the volume of subcontracted activity in the sector.

They will also apply a cap on the volume of subcontracting and will take forward work this academic year to establish the right threshold for that cap and timescales for a staged reduction. All providers’ Corporations and Boards who choose to subcontract will have to publish a curriculum rationale for their limited subcontracted activity.

The new measures are being introduced gradually, following a sector wide ESFA consultation launched earlier this year, to improve the management and oversight of the limited, but necessary, future subcontracting arrangements entered into.

Before the consultation launched, ESFA’s chief executive, Eileen Milner wrote to the sector highlighting concerns about the continued rise in cases of fraud linked to subcontracting arrangements managed by ESFA lead providers despite ESFA’s tightening of subcontractor arrangements.

The consultation received over 400 responses, with a large proportion from independent training providers. The majority of proposals were supported, including the requirement for a clear curriculum rationale; control of the volume and value of provision delivered by subcontractors; simplifying third party arrangements with specialist providers such as sport; rationalising funding rules; requiring the publication of fees and charges across all funding streams; and the introduction of an externally validated standard.

ESFA will develop the new subcontracting standard through 2020/21, will trial it in 2021/22 and fully implement, once externally validated by audit firms, in 2022/23.

Other areas that will change include:

• placing restrictions and limits on types of subcontracting that have been identified as higher risk
• acting on the use of brokers to ‘sell on’ provision to subcontractors
• improving, across ESFA, the use of the data and audit returns to identify and act on risks

Although the implementation of these reforms will begin in time for the next academic year, the changes will be brought in over the next three years, to allow for a period of adjustment.