Funding Assurance
Your new best critical friend
Navigating the compliance world in further education and skills funding can be complicated and frustrating. Finding a trusted and knowledgeable organisation who understands what is required and can support you can be just as frustrating.
To help you make that decision we have created Validera Education – a company dedicated to providing funding assurance services to the FE and Skills sector. Our emphasis is on high quality delivery, comprehensive understanding of the main funding streams and how the funding assurance approach works. Match that with clear and concise feedback, technical and robust reporting and recommendations based on our prior experience and you have your new assurance best friend.
Our Approach
Why reinvent the wheel? Our funding assurance work follows the ESFA/DfE approach to the letter. Utilising the relevant working papers we replicate the standard assurance approach in terms of planning, sample selection and sizes, timelines, working papers and outputs. It’s probably the closest you’ll get to the real thing without getting the dreaded notification letter – plus we’re there to support you and provide advice on how to improve and limit any potential recovery of funds.
What we offer
Funding Assurance
Validera can offer funding assurance in the following areas:
Apprenticeships (including higher level programmes)
Adult Skills Funding and Tailored Learning
Devolved Adult Skills Funding
16-19 study programmes and T Levels
Advanced Learner Loans and Loans Bursary
16-19 Bursaries and Free Meals in FE
Learning support funds and Earnings Adjustment Statements (EAS)
PDSAT review and testing
Whilst it would be great to have a funding assurance review every year that mimics the current approach, sometimes budgets won’t allow for it. To help you with this our offer is designed to be a pick and choose approach, offering flexibility in approach. Rather than a price for everything, we price at funding stream level based on the maximum sample size required by the funding body e.g. Apprenticeship maximum sample size is 30.
If as a provider you only want a review of ASF devolved and 16-19 study programmes with a PDSAT review with samples that can be delivered for you. The choice is yours.
Training
If you have a burning desire to understand how the assurance process works we can also offer a variety of training services that answer all those pesky funding audit related questions.
Funding assurance
A key question is always – what does a funding auditor do? This training session is designed to answer that question and more.
Walking through the funding assurance process from start to finish, the training covers all aspects of the approach, from notification through to management reports. Using the working papers as a template, we’ll explain what auditors are looking for at each stage of the approach with plenty of examples of good and poor practice.
This training is essential in preparing for a funding assurance review.
Provider Data Self-Assessment Toolkit (PDSATs)
PDSATs are key element of the funding assurance approach. With 90+ reports in PDSATs covering all the major funding streams, it can be overwhelming to the new starter and the experienced MIS practitioner alike, with a key questions including:
Where do I start?
What is the report telling me?
I thought I’d fixed this but the issue is still there
How do auditors review the reports?
What should I expect in an ESFA funding assurance review?
To help answer these questions and support providers in using PDSATs, Validera is now providing comprehensive PDSAT training. Delivered either online or onsite, the session will use your own ILR data to train individuals to teams on how to get the most out of the PDSAT software.
The training will cover:
Explain what PDSATs are used for
Walk through the reports with explanations on that the report is designed to do
Explain how auditors review the reports
Sampling PDSAT reports
Purpose of the C1/C2 document in an ESFA funding assurance review
By the end of the session attendees will be well equipped to deal with PDSATs mocing forwards.
Why Validera?
Our funding assurance offer is led by Karl Bentley, a widely respected funding assurance auditor. Karl has an extensive track record of over 19 years of delivering funding assurance reviews for the funding agency and across the sector for clients directly. Having worked on the ‘real thing’ as well as high profile investigations, Karl’s experience and understanding of the ESFA assurance approach means you’ll get a detailed review, exploring key areas and honest and fair feedback on your data and supporting evidence.
Did we also mention that he literally lives and breathes funding assurance?
Karl is also supported by a wider team who all have experience of education and skills and the whole team looks forward to supporting you in this area.
Higher Education