Where does our course data from?

SignedUp SKills gets your course data from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). This enables your courses to be displayed without asking you to input data into another system. This means users of a regional instance can find lots of different learning opportunities from colleges, training providers and local education authorities that are contracted with the ESFA.

You can see the raw data used on data.gov.uk. The ESFA data is refreshed once a month, so updates can take up to 7 weeks to be reflected in the site.

What can I do to make sure our course data is accurate?

All course data comes from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). To make sure your course data is accurate, please send accurate course data to the ESFA. This will be presented word for word. Use the Publish to Course directory service to update your data.

Sometimes the data provided to the ESFA contains formatting that ESFA does not support and so is converted to strange characters. Most of these characters are purged in order to display the data in the site, however if any remain you may wish to review the format of the data supplied to the ESFA.

You can see the raw data used on data.gov.uk. The ESFA data is refreshed once a month, with the previous month's data being made available in the second week of the month, so updates could take up to 7 weeks to be reflected in the portal.

If there is an issue with the raw data and you unsure how to update it, you can contact the Course Directory Support Team on 0844 811 5073 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm) or [email protected]

Why is my course not appearing?

If your course is not being returned by the search and you believe you have supplied the course data to the ESFA, please check the following:

The start date of the course. The course will not appear in the ESFA data if the start date was more than a month ago. If the start date is set to 'flexible' it should be listed.

The postcode of the venue (or location) of the course. If the postcode is not in your region, the course will not appear.

When the course was added / updated. The ESFA data is provided once a month, this is usually in the second or third week of the month and contains the data as of at the start of the month. If the course was added or updated in the last 7 weeks it may not be appearing correctly yet.

The provider name as known to the ESFA. It may be that your course is only being returned under the official name of your provider (the one associated with your UKPRN). See below for more information on this.

You can review the raw data used on data.gov.uk.

Why is the name of our college different from the one we normally use?

As your portal will uses the ESFA data, the provider name supplied is the official name associated with your UKPRN number. In some cases, this is the name of a college group which may be less well known than the names of the individual colleges.

If your college is often known under a different name, we suggest you include this name as the venue or location name when you supply your data to ESFA. The venue name is displayed directly below the provider name on the cards and course details screen. The Provider name filter will return courses which match on either the provider name or the venue name.

Where is the apprenticeship data supplied from?

The apprenticeship data is fed from the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS).

The apprenticeships listed are actual opportunities offered by an employer for an individual to do an apprenticeship. There may be apprenticeship standards which you could offer off-the-job training for, but these will not be listed unless an opportunity is currently available with an employer.

The data is supplied directly from NAS and so updates to the data should be reflected in the site within a day.

How can I make sure our apprenticeships appear?

Ensure all the apprenticeships you have been contracted to provide the off-the-job training for, are listed on the National Apprenticeship Service. You can do this via the Recruit an Apprentice service. Unless the employer is very large and has direct grant funding they will not be able to do this themselves and you, as the training provider, will need to list the opportunity.

Ensure the address of the apprenticeship employer has a postcode within your region.