Overall Year First Reported Completed/Withdrawn in PICSWeb QAR Calculations

Owned by James Francis
Last updated: May 03, 2022 by Joe Robson (Unlicensed)
2 min read

When Calculating the Overall Year for an aim, the QAR calculations take into account the date when the aim was first sent to the ESFA as either Completed or Withdrawn. This is to handle leavers in a year that are first sent to ESFA after that year has closed for submission.

Reasons for this could be: late data entry after the hard close of a previous ILR year; or where learners on a planned break have now been marked as withdrawn in the year after their original end date.

For example:  

  • An aim with an expected end in 2020/21 was put on a planned break with a Completion Status of 6 (planned break) and an end date in 2020/21.

  • In 2021/22 period 5 (December) the learner was changed to a withdrawal in 2020/21, with a Completion Status of 3 (withdrawn).

  • This is after the hard-close for 2020/21, but the data will be submitted in the 2021/22 ILR file.

  • Therefore, the withdrawal is first submitted to ESFA in the period 5 (December) 2021/22 ILR file. 

  • The ESFA QAR will include it in the Overall totals for 2021/22, not the earlier year.

PICSWeb attempts as below to identify the date/year in which an aim is first submitted as ended. The dates used in the example below are for running a 2021/22 Achievement Rates report – note that the calculation only looks for changes to completion status made in the reporting year. 

  1. Find all aims which ended in a previous year (2020/21 or earlier) with Completion Status 2 (Completed) or 3 (Withdrawn). 

  2. Check for change logs in the current reporting year (2021/22) based on R14 deadline dates (22/10/2021 to 20/10/2022), where the aim Completion Status has been changed to 2 or 3 from something which is not 2 or 3.

  3. Check that there is NOT a change log in a previous year (on or before 21/10/2021) where the aim Completion Status was changed to 2 or 3.

  4. For any aims which match the criteria above, set the hybrid end date to the date of the earliest change in the current report year (2021/22). 

  5. The hybrid end date is then used to identify the Overall Year in which to count the learner aim for the QAR.

The simplest way to avoid confusion? Submit all leavers in a year before that year closes!