Skill Scans

We are concluding the Skill Scan workstream with a couple of additions to help you provide more detail in your Skill Scans.

We have added a new section to the training provider’s view of the Skill Scan: the Discussion section.

Here, training provider users will be able to add comments for each learning outcome in the Skill Scan. It will be optional to do so, but you may find it useful to provide supporting comments for audit purposes.

In the same section, you will also be able to see the score history for that learning outcome. This will be shown when the applicant has completed the Skill Scan during self-enrolment, but a training provider user has later updated the score.

Every learning outcome will need to have a score before you are able to save the comments.

Please note that only training provider users will be able to see the Discussion section. Applicants will not be able to see it or add comments to the learning outcomes.

Reviews

The final deliverable of the Reviews workstream is here! In this release we have updated the signature mechanism within a Review.

The updated signature mechanism will have the following options:

• Add signature online
• Request signatures via email
• Confirm signature has been obtained offline

We have improved our security on signatures, meaning that Learners and Employers will have to log-in to Bud to add their signature, if requested to sign the review by a training provider user. Training provider users will no longer be able to apply the online signature on behalf of the Learner or the Employer.

The new signature mechanism is also far more accessible, ensuring that keyboard-only users can add a typed signature. The signature box can also be picked up by screen-reading devices.

Please note that the new signature method will not require you to re-capture any signatures already added to in-progress reviews. Where reviews have already been added, the old-style signature will be presented on the review.

For more information, please see this video:

ILR and Compliance

24/25 ILR Specification

As part of our commitment to ensuring the Bud platform is ready for the new funding year in good time, we have completed the development of the changes announced in V1 and V2 of the ILR specification document for 24/25.

Many of the changes will not be valid until the start of the new academic year on 01/08/24. Where this is the case, it will be clearly marked with a “Valid from 01/08/24” label on the field. The label “Valid to 31/07/24” will be shown in the case of fields to be deprecated in the new academic year.

For more details on the specific changes, please see this article.

24/25 funding rules and associated changes 

On the 28th of March 2024, the ESFA published the draft apprenticeship funding rules for the 2024/2025 academic year. In this release we have made several changes to the Bud platform to support the new funding rules and, as part of the same workstream, we have also made a few additional small compliance enhancements to the platform. 
 
For full details of the changes made please see this article.

Programme Cohort Reference

We have added a new field in the programme details section of the apprenticeship enrolment workflow to allow the collection of an optional “Programme Cohort Reference” which can be used to assign a provider-defined value to a learner. 

This data point will be made available in the Data Warehouse in a subsequent release.

Bug Fixes

In this release we have fixed the following bugs:

• Employer information missing from the Training Plan document
• Off-the-job Hours resetting to the original value when generating a new version of the Training Plan document
• Dashboard alert icon disappearing on smaller devices
• Disabled trainers still showing as available when selecting the trainer in enrolment
• The Delivery Location Postcode not automatically populating the ILR field for AEB learners
• Some PMR records duplicating to returned aims following a return from a break in learning
• The ILR “Bulk add funding records” feature which could lead to some payment records not populating the ILR correctly
• SCORM activities sometimes not auto-completing after editing a published programme

Please note that for the two Training Plan bugs, for any impacted learners you will need to re-generate new versions of the document for the fix to apply.

Business Intelligence - Wednesday 15th @ 2:30pm

Standard Reports

In this release we have made a few small enhancements to the standard reports following feature requests.

• ULN has been added to the All Progress Reviews table
• OTJH log now includes all programme types (only Apprenticeships show on load but all OST can be added via the new slicer)

Safeguarding Reports - Standard Reports and Operations Dashboard

Due to the nature of the content in the comments fields of the safeguarding report, we were aware that some providers may have been limiting access to the Standard Reports from some users and missing out on valuable insights. We have taken the opportunity to open these reports up to all users by removing the sensitive comments fields from the Safeguarding Reports.

The overall counts still remain in this report for continued access to those that need them however any data in the comments fields that you may not have wished to be public have now been removed.

To ensure access to these fields is still possible, we have duplicated the Safeguarding Report in the Caseload section of the Operations Dashboard Report with the comments remaining.

Bug Fixes

In this release we have fixed the following bugs:

• Indicative Earnings report Employer and Provider incentive payments out of sync
• Employer Reports Return from break date not present for some learners

Data Warehouse Fields

Due to the change in ESFA guidance around employer signatures on applicant summary documents, we have amended the [Applicant Summary completed] and [Applicant summary compliance checked] flags in Presentation.Application so Employer Signatures are not checked for applications created on or after 01/08/2023.