Welcome to the monthly roundup from the SDN Mesma Group.
- Strengthen your SAR with independent validation
- Self Assessing Brilliantly goes on Tour in Yorkshire
- Free webinar: DfE Apprenticeship Assurance Findings, Where Is Your Funding Risk?
- Professional development: Built to move you from theory to practice
- Who’s Supposed to catch a Generation that Outsources its Thinking?
- Apprenticeship Assessment Reforms: greater discretion, higher stakes
We also share our regular round-up of highlights from the news in the FE and skills sector.
Grab a cuppa, have a read, and as always, do share with your friends and colleagues.
Strengthen your SAR with independent validation
At this time of year, providers get in touch to ask if we can provide independent validation for their SAR and QIP. Our diaries are now open for independent validation and support. Initial calls are always free of charge. Independent validation helps you test whether your self-assessment reflects reality and highlights where improvements are needed. Often, the challenge isn’t a lack of scrutiny, but whether the right evidence is being presented.
We provide independent validation, SAR/QIP support, quality reviews, and inclusion audits. If you’d like to explore the options, book a no-obligation conversation with our team.
Self Assessing Brilliantly goes on Tour in Yorkshire
Our annual Self Assessing Brilliantly webinar is for anyone involved in evaluating and improving their provision, with a focus on making self-assessment a driver of improvement. If you missed it, catch up on the recording for free here.
Part 2: Using AI to Self Assess Brilliantly is also available to catch up here.
We took both Self Assessing Brilliantly sessions to Yorkshire Learning Providers, joining their Quality, Well-being & Inclusion Conference and Quality Forum.
As a longstanding corporate member of YLP, it’s our pleasure to contribute to events across the network for their members.
If you’re a Yorkshire based provider you can find out more about YLP membership here, or contact us if you’d like to bring our professional development to your network.
New free webinar: DfE Apprenticeship Assurance Findings, Where Is Your Funding Risk?
What the latest DfE assurance findings mean for your apprenticeship compliance risk. Join David Lockhart-Hawkins for a practical 45-minute session exploring recurring and emerging funding risks, helping you identify where your organisation may be exposed and where to focus assurance activity.
Register for free, and if you can’t attend live, you’ll receive the recording.
Compliance and funding professional development:
Built to move you from theory to practice.
- DfE Apprenticeship Assurance Findings: Where Is Your Funding Risk? | 16 Oct
- Data Management in Apprenticeship Programmes | 19-29 Oct
- Claim apprenticeship learning support funding with confidence | 3-12 Nov
- Being an Effective Ofsted Nominee under the Revised EIF | 25 Nov-3 Dec
- Apprenticeship Units 2026: Designing and Delivering a Compliant Offer | 1 Dec
- Understanding Apprenticeship Financial Management | 4-10 Dec
- Improve Teaching and Learning Through Purposeful Observation | 7-14 Dec
- Apprenticeship Compliance for Leaders | 19-26 Jan
Do you have a Professional Development event coming up? We offer group bookings and bespoke sessions tailored to your organisation’s needs. Contact us here for information.
Can’t make the live date? Most sessions are recorded. Register your place and we will send you the recording and/or resources once the sessions have taken place.
Please note all funding and compliance professional development has been updated in line with the new 2026-27 apprenticeship funding rules.
Top News from the FE and Skills Sector
The latest SDN Mesma Group blogs and insights:
- Who’s Supposed to catch a Generation that Outsources its Thinking? In this FE News article, Lou Doyle takes a look at who will help future generations develop and maintain the core skills they still need as AI makes outsourcing thinking easier
- Apprenticeship Assessment Reforms: greater discretion, higher stakes: Get the latest breakdown of assessment reform from Technical Education Specialist Stephen King
Updates from across the sector:
- Celebrate T Levels week as an employer or provider: download the DfE’s T Levels Week toolkit
- Prevention not rescue, rethinking youth unemployment by Futures For All
- Free SEND training materials released for schools and colleges with £200m backing from the DfE
- Neurodivergent people need support based on need, not diagnosis, report finds from the DWP
- V Levels: getting the foundations right for students, staff and the sector from Cambridge OCR
- Labour conference 2026: FE Week live blog