Progress back on the scorecard: what this week’s DfE moves mean for colleges

Date | 27th February 2026

Progress measures return to the spotlight

The policy news cycle felt very post‑16 this week: progress measures are back, estates have a new digital home, and funding and workforce data are edging closer to the timelines colleges have been asking for. None of this is abstract. It lands squarely in curriculum planning meetings, MIS dashboards and those “where are we going to put them?” conversations about next year’s cohort.

The Department for Education has confirmed the publication of English and maths progress measures for 2024–25 at the provider level, after a pause since 2019 because of Covid‑distorted data. This is now the headline accountability measure for how far students without a grade 4 in English or maths move on during their post‑16 study. For colleges, this quietly resets the stakes on resit strategy. The technical guidance sits alongside the data, but the real questions are being asked in English and maths teams: Are we putting our most experienced staff with the largest resit groups? Does this timetable data match what is really happening in classrooms on attendance, behaviour and progression?

Using English and maths guidance as a working tool

Alongside the performance information, the DfE has published a new English and maths effective practice guide, developed with the FE Commissioner’s team and providers. It pulls together examples under ten themes – from induction to assessment – with case material that will feel familiar to many colleges.

Senior teams should resist filing this under “nice to have”. Instead, treat it as a prompt for targeted changes: for example, using MIS to track workshop attendance in real time, or agreeing with governors which English and maths metrics will sit on the dashboard for the next planning cycle. This is also an opportunity to ask whether current delivery models really work for students who are juggling part‑time jobs, travel and support needs, not just for timetables.

Estates: a new digital starting point

The second big shift is estates. The DfE has launched the new Manage Your Education Estate digital service, bringing guidance, condition data and tools into one place for schools and colleges. It is explicitly designed to tell responsible bodies when new guidance, funding data and opportunities are available and to give them direct access to condition information.

For many FE and sixth‑form colleges, this arrives against a backdrop of study spaces being stretched, specialist rooms operating at capacity and access routes that do not always work for students with high needs. Estates, finance and curriculum leaders will want to sit down together with this new service open on screen: does the condition data match what staff and students are saying about comfort, accessibility and fitness for current group sizes? Are we ready to evidence need when the next capital window opens?

Funding timelines and planning headaches

Funding certainty remains a live concern. The same DfE update confirms that detailed information on 16–19 funding rates and methodology for 2026–27 will come in March, with most provider‑level allocations due by the end of that month and the remainder in April. That is not early, but it at least aligns with the planning cycle many colleges now work to.

Leaders will still be scenario planning: one spreadsheet for a flat rate, another for a modest uplift, and each with different assumptions about class size, contact hours and enrichment. Finance, curriculum and MIS teams will be under pressure to move quickly once allocations land, especially where growth in applications is already outpacing space and staffing.

Workforce data: closer to live conversations

Finally, workforce data is moving onto a slightly more useful timetable. The 2024–25 FE Workforce Data Collection has closed, with key findings promised for late May. From 2025–26, the collection window shifts to July–September so that national data can be published in late autumn, rather than the following May.

That gives policymakers a chance to act sooner, but it also gives colleges a benchmark for their own staffing conversations. HR and curriculum leads will be watching to see whether national figures mirror what they are already seeing locally on hard‑to‑recruit subjects, reliance on agency staff and the age profile of specialist teachers. This week’s updates point in the same direction: closer linking of accountability, space, staffing and money. The colleges that cope best will be those where data teams, estate managers and curriculum leaders are already in the same room, looking at the same dashboards – and asking the awkward questions before the next Ofsted visit or funding meeting does.