Guidance

How ESFA maintains oversight of Independent Training Providers (ITPs)

Guidance for ITPs explaining how the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) will take action to address the potential risk of failure.

Applies to England

Documents

Details

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) closed on 31 March 2025. All activity has moved to the Department for Education (DfE). You should continue to follow this guidance.

This publication provides operational guidance for ITPs explaining how ESFA will take action to address the potential risk of failure.

ITPs includes a range of different legal entities with which the ESFA contracts. In this guidance we use the terms 鈥�ITPs鈥� or 鈥減roviders鈥� to mean:

  • Independent Learning Providers
  • Independent Specialist Providers
  • Charitable and Commercial Providers
  • Special post-16 institutions (note that in this case the term 鈥渃ontract鈥� in this document refers to the grant funding agreement)
  • Employer providers

Updates to this page

Published 1 April 2019
Last updated 26 May 2021 show all updates
  1. We have updated the operational guide to reflect changes to RoATP, subcontracting, funding high risk organisations, establishment of a Large Provider Team and a new section on ESFA approach to investigations.

  2. Added information to contract enforcement section.

  3. First published.

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