Funding Flexible Attendance and Blended Learning

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These papers are intended to help providers who want to find ways in which they can offer more flexible provision on a cost effective basis. Many providers are seeking to make it easier for learners to maintain involvement with learning, despite having busy and unpredictable lives. They generally want to do so in one of two ways (or a combination of the two). They are looking to:

Give learners some choice over the times they attend a centre, how long they stay for when they attend, and for how many weeks they follow the programme.

and/or

Introduce an element of 'blended learning' that is develop materials that enable learners to study on their own for part of the time.

The papers focus on these two approaches, and furthermore recognise that some providers are seeking to work with Train to Gain funding (which next year will be subsumed within the Employer Responsive Model) while others are working within more traditional FE rules.

It needs to be stressed at the outset that this note cannot be taken as a substitute for the official funding guidance published by LSC. These documents can be accessed at http://www.lsc.gov.uk/providers/funding-policy/ and, together with discussions with the local LSC partnership team should be the basis for any funding claim. This note simply seeks to advise projects on how the question of funding flexible delivery might be approached within current rules and seeks feedback on the success (or lack of it) that providers experience.