2022 cohort closure: information for lead providers

Published: 21 March 2025

Updated: 15 April 2025

Background

We’re closing the 2022 cohort at the end of July 2025. This means:

lead providers will no longer be able to receive payments for training participants assigned to that cohort
we’ll stop generating output fee statements for the 2022 cohort
we’ll move partially trained early career teachers (ECTs) assigned to the 2022 contract to the 2024 cohort if there’s evidence they require training during the 2025/26 academic year

How we’ll handle participants who haven’t completed their training by 31 July

Training status	Post-2022 cohort closure
Partially trained ECTs	We’ll move these ECTs to the 2024 cohort if there’s evidence they require training during the 2025/26 academic year
Partially trained mentors	We will not transfer mentors to the 2024 cohort because they’re not eligible for further training. We’ll mark them as `completed` and update their `mentor_funding_end_date`
ECTs and mentors with no `eligible`, `payable`, `paid`, `awaiting_clawback` or `clawed_back` declarations	We’ll archive these participants. Providers should retire their records. If they’re re-registered in the 2025/26 academic year, they’ll have new IDs

Moving ECTs to the 2024 cohort

For ECTs where there’s evidence they require training during the 2025/26 academic year, we’ll start moving them to the 2024 cohort when registration opens in June.

We’ll have the following automatic triggers to move partially trained ECTs to the 2024 cohort:

if they’re registered as transferring into the school after June 2025
if the participant is still recorded as currently serving induction in the ‘Record inductions as an appropriate body’ service after mid-September 2025

These triggers will only take place if the induction tutor has set up their school’s 2025/26 programme.

Once the participant is in the 2024 cohort and the correct partnership is in place, providers will be able to continue getting their details over the API and declare for them in line with the 2024 milestones.

Identifying ECTs who we’ve moved to the 2024 cohort

To help providers identify these ECTs in the API v3 test environment, there’s a field in the GET participant API endpoints called cohort_changed_after_payments_frozen.

For ECTs who’ve moved to the 2024 cohort, the field will have a true value in it.

When calling the GET participant endpoint, the ECT’s cohort value will be 2024. When calling the GET participant-declarations endpoint, the ECT will have historical declarations in their original cohort.

Providers should use the cohort_changed_after_payments_frozen field to identify the ECT.

We’ll also assign these ECTs to the ecf-extended-september schedule. This allows providers to submit any required declarations for the 2025/26 academic year.

Updating enrolment records

Once we’ve moved a participant to the 2024 cohort, the next time a provider retrieves participant details via the API they’ll notice the cohort field’s value will be 2024.

Providers will need to update their enrolment records so that participants moved to the 2024 cohort are tagged correctly.

Provider CRMs will need to handle having declarations spanning across multiple cohorts if they keep these records.

Providers will also need to update the enrolment cohort to the latest one.

Raising outstanding declarations

Where possible, providers should submit any outstanding declarations for participants currently in the 2022 cohort before registration for the 2025/26 academic year opens.

If the provider is the default for both the 2022 and 2024 cohorts, they can temporarily restore the participant to the 2022 cohort to make a declaration, then move them back to 2024 if needed.

If a declaration has already been made in 2024, they must:

Void it.
Revert to 2022 and make the declaration there.
Restore to 2024 and redeclare there.

Where this is not possible, providers must ask us via the Slack channels to move the participants between cohorts.

Unlike when we closed the 2021 cohort, mentors who started training in 2022 will not be able to be moved between frozen cohorts. This is because they’ll be marked as `completed`.

Voiding declarations

Providers will no longer be able to void declarations previously paid in the 2022 cohort after 31 July 2025.

Contract management and assurance will carry out final checks and be in touch before the 2022 cohort is closed.

ECTs who are still in the 2022 cohort and have not been identified as continuing to train will also no longer be eligible to be declared for after the 31 July 2025. Providers will get a 422-error message asking them to contact us if they think this participant should be moved and declared for.

Testing future declaration submissions in the 2024 cohort

For ECTs moved to the new cohort, providers will be able to continue to declare for them in line with the milestones of the 2024 call-off contracts. These will be agreed between providers and their DfE contract manager.

Identifying a particpant’s training needs

When providers receive a participant who has moved to the 2024 cohort, we recommend they focus on:

understanding how much training the participant has left
when they last engaged with training
where they were previously undertaking their training

Many of these participants will have experienced stop-start or interrupted training journeys, often due to deferrals or other changes.

There’s no automated process to determine their continuation point or how much induction an ECT has left to serve, so it’s important for providers to confirm this directly with the participant, the participant’s school or their appropriate body.

If there are nuances based on a participant’s original cohort or schedule, and your approach may vary as a result, we’d welcome providers sharing this with us. This will help improve how we support similar cases in future.

How to tell between 2022 and 2021 starters who’ve moved to the 2024 cohort

Providers can identify which cohort participants have moved from by taking the following steps:

Start by checking the GET participants/ecfendpoint for participants who’ve moved to the 2024 cohort after originally starting their training in 2021 or 2022. They’re identified by the cohort_changed_after_payments_frozen attribute being true.
Then, using the GET participant-declarations or GET participant-declarations/{id} endpoint and filtering by participant_id, find the statement_id.
Finally, call GET statements/{id}. The cohort field in the response shows which cohort each declaration was originally made in.

Test data

We’ll set up dummy data/contracts and milestones in the test (sandbox) environment to support providers before registration opens.

Providers will be able to identify participants with the cohort_changed_after_payments_frozen field.

Provider checklist

Ahead of the 2022 cohort closing, we recommend providers:

check their CRM to make sure they can handle an enrolment in a new cohort with declarations spanning across 2022 and 2024
familiarise themselves with the cohort_changed_after_payments_frozen field in the GET participant endpoint response
check they can see historically submitted declarations made in a previous cohort in the GET participant-declarations endpoint when using the cohort filter
attempt some future declarations and ensure they’re recorded and handled safely in their CRM
raise any outstanding declarations for the participants in the 2022 cohort before 31 July 2025