Aims which are on a planned break (completion status 6) are normally excluded from Achievement Rates. However where aims have been on a planned break for a long time and not restarted, the ESFA treats them as an Achievement Rate withdrawal. These aims are referred to as Overdue Planned Breaks and count towards the QAR totals in the same way as any other withdrawn learner.

PICS uses the following calculation to decide of a learner should be excluded as an Overdue Planned Break (this is based on the wording in the ESFA QAR Specification).

Identifying Overdue Planned Break

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Aims

An aim is considered to be on a planned break if:

• The aim Completion Status is 6.

• The aim end date is not blank.

• The aim end date is in the year before the QAR year or earlier. e.g. for the 2020 2021 QAR the end date must before 31/07/2020 2021 (the end of 20192020). Aims which ended in the QAR year are not considered overdue as they have until the end of the following year to return.

• They do not have a corresponding restart aim (see below).

Calculating the "Latest Restart Date" for an

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Aim

If an aim is on planned break, it must have a corresponding restarted aim to prevent it becoming overdue. Depending on the end date of the aim, there are different rules for when the aim must have been restarted:

• If the aim end date was 2 years or more before the QAR year, the latest restart date is the last day of the aim end year plus two years. e.g. for the 2021 QAR, if the aim ended on 04 Jan 2019 2020 (20182019), there must be a restarted aim by 31 Jul 2020 2021 (last day of 20192020).

• If the aim end date was in the year immediately before the QAR year, the latest restart date is the last day of R04 submission in the year after the QAR year. e.g. for the 2020 2021 QAR, if an aim ended on 15 Mar 2020 2021 (20192020), there must be a restarted aim by 30 Nov 2021 2022 (R04 20212022).

Identifying Restart Aims

An aim on planned break (the "planned-break-aim") is deemed to have a corresponding restarted aim where an aim exists fulfilling these criteria:

• The aim start date is before the latest restart date for the planned-break-aim (see above).

• The Restart FAM field is 1.

• The aim reference is the same as the planned-break-aim reference.

• The aim start date is greater than the planned-break-aim end date.

• The aim original start date is equal to the planned-break-aim start date or planned-break-aim original start date (to cope with learners with multiple planned breaks for the same aim).

How Overdue Planned Breaks Affect the Achievement Rates and the Hybrid End Year

The year in which an overdue planned break is counted (the "hybrid end year") is based on the year of the later of the actual and expected end dates, plus one year. So if an overdue aim ended in 2018 2019 but was expected to end in 2019 2020, they would count towards the 2020 2021 Overall totals.

For mid-year achievement rates, PICS calculates the "hybrid end date" or "overall date" (which is converted to the Overall Period). This is normally the latest of the planned and actual end dates, but for overdue planned breaks this is calculated as the first day of the calculated hybrid end year.

Overdue Planned Breaks are treated as withdrawals for the purpose of Overall QAR data. Therefore they count towards the total number of learners for a year, but do not have an achievement. Overdue Planned Breaks do not affect timely achievement rates.

A Note on the “QAR Year” and PICSWeb

In PICS Desktop, the QAR Year was based on the explicit report selected e.g. the “2020 Apprenticeship QAR”. In PICSWeb, we do not offer explicit reports for each year’s calculations. Instead, we calculate the QAR Year based on the date selected for the report (i.e. the To date on the report options screen) and the report will always use the latest available ESFA calculation methodology.

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