English/Maths grade at last census is lower than the current grade, not set, or set to 'Not Recorded'

If you see an Arbor validation error with one of these messages, there is an issue within your post-16 GCSE Attainment for Funding records, which could lead to a potential loss of ESFA funding:

• English grade at last census is not set, please review as this may impact funding.
• Maths grade at last census is not set, please review as this may impact funding.
• English grade at last census is set to "Not Recorded", but a current grade has been recorded. Please review as this may impact funding.
• Maths grade at last census is set to "Not Recorded", but a current grade has been recorded. Please review as this may impact funding.
• English grade at last census is lower than the current grade. Please review as this may impact funding.
• Maths grade at last census is lower than the current grade. Please review as this may impact funding.

Arbor has detected an error with the Grade at last census field for a student.

Tip Tip: Where a student was on roll in the previous academic year, but is not on roll in the current year, the DfE only collects the Grade at last census field in the Autumn census return. 

As a result, these errors will only trigger for students who were on roll in the previous academic year, but are not on roll during the current year.

Resolving the errors

To correct any of these errors, you should review and update the students' GCSE Attainment for Funding: Adding prior attainment for English and Maths

Grade at last census is not set

This error message will trigger when a student has no Grade at last census recorded for either English or Maths. As the DfE only collects grade at last census for students who were on roll in the previous year, but are not on roll in the current year, these fields should be completed on Arbor, and set to the student's highest achievement in English/Maths.

Grade at last census is set to "Not Recorded", but a current grade has been recorded

This error message will trigger when a student has their Grade at last census set for English or Maths set to No grade recorded, but a Grade value for the subject has been recorded.

As the DfE only collects grade at last census for students who were on roll in the previous year, but are not on roll in the current year, the Grade at last census field should be set to the student's highest achievement in English/Maths.

Grade at last census is lower than the current grade

This error message will trigger when a student has a Grade at last census set for English or Maths, but their Grade value for the subject is a higher value.

As the DfE only collects grade at last census for students who were on roll in the previous year, but are not on roll in the current year, the Grade at last census field should be set to the student's highest achievement in English/Maths.

If a student has undertaken a resit since the previous census and has achieved a higher grade, both the Grade and Grade at last census fields should be updated to reflect the higher grade, as Grade at last census is the only field that will be returned in the census.