Guided Learning Hours

The short answer is "yes". There are no AEB funding rules that say how many hours you should deliver a qual in (in fact, without auditing you, ESFA cannot tell how many hours a given qual is delivered in). In the past, we have been warned that if *everyone* is delivering a qual in fewer hours than it appears to be funded for, then the funding value would be looked at (and reduced), but I cannot think of an example of that happening in the last decade...

Having said that, I've heard rumblings that Greater Manchester are getting a bit antsy about it, but I don't think they've actually *done* anything yet...

Just to add to this. We have the same situation in London, but have evidence from our awarding body that the quality and content of training meets the requirements of the qual and they are therefore happy for us to deliver in fewer hours. A nice bit of paper to wave in front of auditors.

That's great thank you. Would this be the same with Study Programme? I know we do record the hours on the ILR with these. Some of the qualifications, we can deliver in a smaller amount of GLH and our learners complete/achieve, we don't have any issues with our awarding body so can we plan less providing we can justify?

In a sense, it's sort of the opposite with Study Progs, in that you get more money if you deliver in more hours (up to 540)! But, again, nothing in the funding rules says what we should/shouldn't do with regard to hours.

(Dave, thanks for the London update! And, yes, that's *exactly* the sort of thing I'd want to wave about!!!)

We work with GMCA and they say you have to plan to cover at least 70% of the GLH in your delivery plan. If the learner does not turn up for the full hours its fine but you have to plan to deliver at least the 70%

I mean, I sort of get it, but also, no, we are the professional educators. As long as people are on appropriate level courses* and achieving then it's none of their business how many hours we do it in (at least, until the funding formula changes)...

*and this is the concern of course, that ppl are been fast-tracked through courses too easy for them, but you check IAG/prior attainment for that, not hours.

My MIS team flagged this with me recently as the majority of my subs were substantially delivering under GLH on AEB- an example was a L1 course being delivered over 4 days and 30 hours where GLH was 80.

I was sent a section from a funding doc  (not sure which one) where it said if there was evidnece of delivery under the GLH they could claim back funding - mentioning value for money.

II've been told this is more a quality of delivery concern rather than an audit issue.