Autumn 2024 changes
Background
For the Autumn 2024 recruitment cycle a lot of changes were made across the service. This post summarises the changes and links to detailed posts.
The following changes were made:
The number of funded places on courses were reduced
This meant a system to monitor and cap the number of funded places was needed. As part of this we:
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Expired registations created under previous eligibility rules, where the course had not been started
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The Performance Analysis team created new dashboards to monitor the number of registrations and acceptances
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A new field was added to the API so providers could tell DfE which registrations were receiving a funded place.
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New course start question to ensure users funding outcome is correct for when they start the course.
Read about monitoring and capping funded places
Eligibility rules for course funding changed
In order for demand to be closer to the level of funding available, the eligibility for funding changed. This meant changes to the registration service in order to give the correct funding outcome.
Read about the eligibility changes
The number of registrations that require manual review were reduced
As a decent number of registrations had been manually reviewed the policy team were able to better determine which ones could receive a funding outcome in the service vs those that still needed to be manually reviewed. Therefore, updates were made to these flows to save the policy team time.
Changes made to the registrations that are reviewed
The special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCO) NPQ was added
The course and specific questions for that course were added. We ran usability tests on this and the other changes made.
Targeted support funding ended
Targeted support funding is not available from Autumn 2024, so this was removed for all new registrations. For past registrations that received targeted support funding this information is still shown on the registration details page.
Closing the service to make these changes
To implement these changes, we closed the service between 2 April to 1 July 2024. An expression of interest form was available so users could sign up to receive email updates about registration reopening.