With the 2022/23 ILR Year approaching, we are hard at work ensuring that the transition between years will run smoothly for all of our ESFA customers.
The new year version of PICS is currently in development and we will upgrade all copies of PICSWeb and hosted Desktop PICS to this version on the 14th August.
Read on to learn more about how we will be supporting you during the change of year.
We have also added a help page for PICSWeb for the 2022/23 ILR Year, which will be updated with useful information covering how PICSWeb will support the new ILR specification. General guidance on ILR Year-End Processes is also available.
ILR Changes
While this is overall a year of minimal change for the ILR Specification, we have identified a few changes that we think are worth highlighting:
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New codes have been added to the specification to handle Skills Bootcamps, including Funding Model 37 and Programme Type 32.
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Previously, Devolved Programme information could only be recorded against individual aims. It will now be possible to record this information for a whole programme as well.
The new year version of PICSWeb will support all of the changes above. More information can be found in the full ESFA 2022/23 ILR Specification.
Cross-Year Data Entry
PICSWeb supports cross-year data entry to keep your processes consistent over the change of year.
You can start entering new learners for the 2022/23 ILR year right now, although you may need to wait if they are starting on new programmes which are not yet supported in PICSWeb, such as Skills Bootcamps.
It will still be possible to enter starts for the 2021/22 ILR year once PICSWeb has been upgraded to the new year version. Sections for 2021 Data will be available in the ILR Learner tab in the learner summary and ILR Data tab in the learning aim summary to record data in fields for the previous year.
Apprenticeship Service (AS) Bulk Uploads and Recognised Prior Learning (RPL)
In response to the recent changes to the Apprenticeship Funding Rules published on 20th July, the ESFA has recently announced that it will be adding additional mandatory fields to the Apprenticeship Service Bulk Upload to capture recognised prior learning information. This will require new fields to be introduced into PICSWeb to capture the necessary information for the upload.
We are currently working on this and hope to have them ready by the 15th August. More information on the new upload specification is available from the ESFA Guidance.
Changes to Total Negotiated Price (TNP)
In addition to the RPL changes mentioned above, further changes to the Apprenticeship Funding Rules for 2022 to 2023 will require the Total Negotiated Price submitted in the ILR to no longer include Additional Employer Costs above the funding cap. The new year version of PICS will include new fields in applicants, qualification plans and learner payments to calculate and track any apprenticeship costs that will be charged to employers but cannot be included in ILR TNP and PMR records.
More details on how to use these features will be provided when PICS 22.00 is released.
