Schedules guidance
Purpose and scope of this guidance
This guidance explains how schedules operate within the register early career teachers service.
Schedules and milestone or window dates are contractually determined and owned by the Department for Education (DfE). This guidance should be read alongside the Payment Guidance issued by contract management, which remains the authoritative source for payment dates, liability, and contractual requirements.
Access to materials should not necessarily be tied to a participant’s cohort or schedule. For example, a mentor may have finished training in 2023 but still need to be given access to materials to support ECTs they are mentoring in 2025.
The purpose of this document is to:
- explain how schedules are assigned in the API
- support providers in understanding when and how schedules may need to be updated
Key concepts
This table defines terms used throughout this guidance. For other contractual terms and definitions, refer to the guidance issued by contract management.
| Concept | Definition |
|---|---|
| Milestone | Contractual retention periods during which providers must submit relevant declarations evidencing training delivery and participant retention. These are used in the delivery of the ECF training programme, in 2024 cohorts and earlier. |
| Milestone dates | The deadline date a valid declaration can be made for a given milestone in order for DfE to be liable to make a payment the following month. Milestone dates are dependent on the participant’s schedule. These are used in the delivery of the ECF training programme, in 2024 cohorts and earlier. |
| Milestone period | The period of time between the milestone start date and deadline date. These are used in the delivery of the ECF training programme, in 2024 cohorts and earlier. This period is also referred to as a declaration window for ECTP, in the 2025 cohort or later. |
| Schedule |
Schedules are timed sequences of expected participant engagement and payment points. These are set when new early career teachers or mentors are registered, based on when they are starting at a school, when they’re registered, and if they’re a replacement mentor. They are then updated and corrected by lead providers via the API. Schedules also give DfE information about how participants are being trained. |
| Extended schedule |
A non-standard training schedule for ECTs who expect to complete their induction over a period greater than 2 years. Examples include part-time ECTs, or ECTs whose induction period is extended by their appropriate body. Mentors can also be assigned extended schedules if they deferred their training and came back later, or they’re doing the training part-time. However, mentors can’t receive extended declarations. |
| Reduced schedule |
A non-standard training schedule for ECTs who expect to complete their induction over a period less than 2 years. An example is an ECT with previous experience teaching. Mentors should not be placed on a reduced schedule. |
| Replacement schedule |
A non-standard training schedule for mentors that are replacing a previous mentor for an ECT that is part way through their training. The mentor must be completely new to provider-led mentor training. |
| Standard schedule | The default training schedule for ECTs completing a standard 2 year induction, or mentors completing standard training for their cohort, starting in September, January or April. Mentors in pre-2025 cohorts would typically do 2 years of training, whilst after this they would do 1 year of training. |
How the service assigns standard schedules
The service will assign a standard September, January or April schedule based on the date the ECT started at their school, or the date they were registered for training (if later).
For mentors, the logic to assign schedules will relate to:
- when they’ve been registered for training by the school
- if they’re identified by the service as a replacement mentor
Providers will need to review schedules and update them if they’re not correct.
ECTs should not start training until they’re registered by a school. If registration happens late, we’ll place them on the next schedule assignment.
| Date range | Schedule assigned |
|---|---|
| 1 June to 31 October |
standard-september
|
| 1 November to 28 or 29 February |
standard-january
|
| 1 March to 31 May |
standard-april
|
For example, a 2025 cohort ECT who started on 1 September 2025 and is completing training over 2 academic years would be on the standard September schedule.
"schedule_identifier": "standard-september"
We’ll use the same date boundaries for mentors, based on when they’re first registered as an ECT’s mentor.
For participants who started their training on or before 31 December 2024, refer to the guidance provided by contract management for those cohorts.
How the service assigns non-standard schedules
Replacement mentor schedules
If a school registers a replacement mentor for an ECT, we’ll assign a replacement mentor schedule based on when they’re first registered as the ECT’s mentor (replacement-september, replacement-january or replacement-april).
It will be up to providers to check these automatically assigned replacement schedules. If a replacement mentor is later assigned as a first mentor to a new ECT doing provider-led training, providers must update the mentor’s schedule to a standard one. This must be done before the end of the ECT’s first term of training and before the mentor’s first started declaration is due.
Extended schedules
We’ll reassign partially trained ECTs from closed cohorts to an active cohort if there’s evidence that they require further training.
In these cases, we’ll assign an extended September schedule (extended-september).
This follows the same approach used in the Manage training for ECTs service.
Reviewing and correcting schedules
These default schedules are designed to reduce the number of manual updates required, but providers are still responsible for checking and correcting them.
Once a schedule has been assigned, it will not change automatically if a participant moves to another school.
In most cases, the schedule suffix (September, January or April), is determined by when the participant first started training, not by when they joined a new school or provider.
For example, if a participant who started on a standard-september schedule transfers to a new school after one term, they will usually remain on the same schedule. Providers should not change the schedule suffix simply because the participant joined them part way through the academic year.
The same principle applies to participants who defer and later resume training. While their circumstances may mean they need to move to an extended schedule, the original start point of their training still determines the schedule suffix.
Providers must:
- review all automatically assigned schedules
- update any schedules that are not appropriate
- confirm that every participant is on the correct schedule for their circumstances
Lead providers should not change the schedule for a participant before it is confirmed they will definitely be moving to that schedule. For example, if a participant is deferred, they should not be changed to an extended schedule until it is confirmed they are returning to training and you have resumed them over the API. This is so we have accurate data for which schedule a participant is currently on.
In Register ECTs, it will not be possible to update a participant’s schedule after their participant_status has changed to ‘left’ for any reason. This is because it would lead to data issues about the date of the change. If this is an issue, contact DfE by Teams or email.
Milestone and payment date guidance
DfE pays lead providers based on agreed contractual schedules and training delivery criteria. Payments relate to the engagement criteria given to lead providers in their contracts.
Output payments are based on valid declarations submitted by the declaration deadline for each milestone or declaration window. These dates correspond to each participant’s schedule.
Contract management circulates milestone or declaration window dates and payment guidance to lead providers.
Example dates for standard September schedule for ECTs
| Milestone | Start date | Declaration deadline | Declaration type | Payment date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Participant Start | 1 Jun 2025 |
31 Oct 2025 (interim) 31 Dec 2025 |
started started |
30 Nov 2025 31 Jan 2026 |
| Retention Point 1 | 1 Jan 2026 | 31 Mar 2026 | retained-1 | 30 Apr 2026 |
| Retention Point 2 | 1 Apr 2026 | 31 Jul 2026 | retained-2 | 31 Aug 2026 |
| Retention Point 3 | 1 Aug 2026 | 31 Dec 2026 | retained-3 | 31 Jan 2027 |
| Retention Point 4 | 1 Jan 2027 | 31 Mar 2027 | retained-4 | 30 Apr 2027 |
| Participant Completion | 1 Apr 2027 | 31 Jul 2027 | completed | 31 Aug 2027 |
Example dates for standard September schedule for mentors
| Milestone | Start date | Declaration deadline | Declaration type | Payment date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Participant Start | 1 Jun 2025 |
31 Oct 2025 31 Dec 2025 |
started started |
30 Nov 2025 31 Jan 2026 |
| Participant Completion | 1 Apr 2026 | 31 Jul 2026 | completed | 31 Aug 2026 |