You might find these adult skills fund (ASF) data files showing the funding bodies that are responsible for funding each postcode in England useful.

We use this data in funding calculations to support publicly funded education and skills in England; covering 16 to 19 study programmes, adult skills fund (ASF), free courses for jobs (FCFJ), apprenticeships, the European Social Fund and advanced learner loans bursary. This includes devolved ASF and FCFJ qualifications funded by mayoral combined authorities or the Greater London Authority.

ASF postcode files

To support the devolution of ASF, we have produced postcode files to show which postcodes are within the devolved areas, and consequently which body is responsible for ASF learners resident in a given postcode.

How we use data from different years

For funded learners aged 16 to 19, we apply the most recent single funding year’s factors to all learners in that funding year, regardless of their start date.

For adult-funded aims and apprenticeship frameworks, we changed our calculations in the 2016 to 2017 year to apply the factor or cash value in our calculations based on the date when the learner started the aim or programme. For example, for learners who started adult-funded aims or apprenticeship frameworks from 1 August 2017 to 31 July 2018, we used the values from the 2017 to 2018 tables in the funding calculations for 2018 to 2019 and then in subsequent years.

Postcodes area cost uplifts

The area cost uplift reflects the higher cost of delivering provision in some parts of the country, such as London and the south east.

Disadvantage uplifts

These are uplifts or amounts for learners living in the most disadvantaged areas of the country.

Historically we have used various versions of the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) to determine disadvantage factors and uplifts.

The IMD is assigned based on lower layer super output areas (LSOAs). LSOAs are a set of geographical areas developed, following the 2001 census, with the aim of defining areas of consistent size whose boundaries would not change between censuses.

Therefore, we initially set disadvantage factors at LSOA level, and then apply the factors to postcodes within each LSOA. We publish disadvantage information on this page at LSOA level and also at postcode level.

For the year 2021 to 2022 onwards, the 2019 IMD has been used for provision funded by the Department for Education (DfE) (or Education and Skills Funding Agency for relevant years). This used LSOA code based mapping from the 2011 census.

For the year 2016 to 2017 up to and including the year 2020 to 2021, we used the 2015 IMD. This used the LSOA mapping from the 2011 census.

Up to the funding year 2015 to 2016, we used the 2010 IMD which used the LSOAs from the 2001 census as its underlying mapping.

Some Mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority have wished to set different disadvantage factors to those of DfE for ASF provision they fund.

We will indicate which organisation’s funding applies to each factor using a ‘SOFCode’ field in the files published here.

The SOFCode field uses values from the <a rel="external" href="https://guidance.submit-learner-data.service.gov.uk/25-26/ilr/entity/LearningDeliveryFA