Department For Education
The European Social Fund (ESF) is part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme for England in 2014 to 2020. The Programmes priorities are to increase labour market participation, promote social inclusion, and develop the skills of the potential and existing workforce.
Colleges and training organisations that deliver higher level skills training through the ESF can ask us to include qualifications and/or their components in the European Social Fund (ESF) qualification offer. These qualifications and/or units must be in Ofquals Register of Regulated Qualifications and must be at level 3 or level 4.
We will not accept requests from awarding organisations to include qualifications and/or components in the ESF higher level skills offer. We are describing the request process in this document for your information only.
From 1 September 2020, we stopped adding new qualifications and their components at level 3 to the ESF higher level skills offer, unless that qualification meets the criteria to be an exemption. This is because, we will stop approving any new qualifications at level 3 and below for funding across all our funded offers, for students aged 16 and above. For more information, please see the section on the funding approval moratorium.
The ESF programme for 2014 to 2020 in England will end on 31 December 2023. We will not consider requests to approve qualifications for the ESF offer if we receive them after Monday 21 November 2022. This includes requests as part of exemptions to the moratorium.
We have included a broad offer of regulated qualifications and their components for ESF, from entry level to level 4. This includes:
- regulated qualifications and components at entry level to level 2, that are part of the ESFA funded AEB local flexibility offer
- regulated qualifications at entry level to level 2 that are in the statutory entitlement offers
- regulated qualifications at level 3 and at level 4, and their components to support higher level skills delivery through ESF
Providers of education and training can only ask us to approve qualifications (not components) at level 4 for the ESF higher level skills offer. If a provider wants us to review a qualification at level 3 as an exemption, the awarding organisation that owns that qualification must ask us to the consider the qualification as an exemption.
The exemption request must include all the evidence that we ask for. We will not accept requests to review exemptions from providers of education and training. For more information, please see the section on the funding approval moratorium.
This document does not cover non-regulated learning at entry level to level 4, which we have already made available. For further information about non-regulated learning available as part of ESF, please see Find a Learning Aim (FaLA).
We will approve a qualification for the ESF higher level skills offer if it meets all the following requirements:
- the qualification must be at level 4
- the qualifications size must be less than 150 guided learning hours (regulated GLH)
- the qualification must meet the common approval principles and the approval principles for ESFA funded AEB local flexibility
During the moratorium, we will not approve any more qualifications at level 3 for funding in the ESF offer.
During the moratorium, we will not approve any more components of qualifications for standalone funding in the ESF offer.
We published funding approval information for qualifications in the 2022 to 2023 ESF higher level skills offer in March 2022.
During the moratorium, we will continue to review qualifications at level 4 for this offer, and we will do this every month.
Providers must send their requests to their ESF Management and Delivery Adviser.