News and updates

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Payment of your funding claim for 2023 to 2024

26 August 2024

Claims submitted before 20 July are being reviewed and processed by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). Payments are due before the end of October 2024. Depending on the type of your educational organisation, you will either be paid directly by ESFA, or your local authority.

New guidance for submitting mentor evidence to DfE

19 August 2024

As part of DfE’s assurance checks, we may ask for supporting evidence for a claim. This process will start in October 2024, for the academic year 2023 to 24.

Even if we do not ask for evidence now, we advise schools and providers to keep evidence, as DfE may ask for it in the future.

Additional guidance will be published on GOV.UK in September 2024 and will include:

  • a recommendation that schools and accredited providers collaborate to confirm the number of training hours for each mentor
  • notification at the start of the claim assurance process will go to the provider and not the placement school. DfE will contact the accredited provider to check the number of hours being claimed is accurate. If further evidence is needed, the provider will request it from the placement school.

Our current guidance about types of evidence has not changed.

We may ask the accredited provider to share evidence of:

  • the number of hours of training each general mentor received
  • the name of the mentor
  • the workplace of the mentor

To help accredited providers, the types of evidence schools may need are:

  • a mentor’s employment at the school, for example, a copy of their employment contract or payslips from the 2023 to 2024 academic year
  • evidence of arranging placements at your school for ITT trainees, such as communication with providers
  • number of hours of initial mentor training completed
  • details of accredited provider and lead mentor who delivered the training

If you have any questions about providing supporting evidence, please email ittmentor.training@education.gov.uk

Celebrating the success of the trial service

12 August 2024

As the first year of the Claim funding for mentor training service (Claims) closes for the academic year 2023 to 2024, we wanted to share and celebrate the successes and learnings.

Our aim was to design a digital service that is easy to use, accessible and that helps educational organisations claim payment for the time and resources needed to support general mentor training.

We tested the new Claims service with two teacher training (ITT) accredited providers and around 310 schools.

So far, we have:

  • Received over 340 claims
  • Started processing and validating over £380,000 in funding claimed through the service this academic year
  • Built in processes for payment and evidence gathering
  • Used insights from within the service and through speaking to users, to make design and technical changes that will help them complete their claim

We continue to gather feedback from our users and aim to make improvements to the service ahead of the planned public beta roll-out in spring 2025.

We hope that in 2025, all eligible educational organisations will claim the funding that is available to them.