2025-26 Funding Rules
Introduction
Following the publication of v1 of the 2025-26 Apprenticeship funding rules, we have started development to ensure that Bud is compliant for the new academic year.
As we have done in previous years, we held a forum with representatives from several of our customers to discuss the funding rules and how Bud can support providers in remaining compliant.
We identified the following key priorities:
- Implementing the new 8-month minimum duration, while continuing to support the 12-month minimum for 2024-25
- Introducing the new minimum OTJT values published by the DfE for each standard, while continuing to support the 20% of working hours & duration calculation for 2024-25
- Adding new questions on the "Initial Assessment Discussion" page of the Apprenticeship application to confirm if a 19+ learner will be opting in or out of Functional Skills
- Supporting the requirement to track active learning for English and Maths delivery by:
- Adding new activity types specifically for English and Maths
- Updating the Training Plan document so the English and Maths activities are clearly planned
- Providing a new report to track active learning for English and Maths delivery
- ILR specification changes - ensuring that the ILR has the most up-to-date fields & codes, per the Government's ILR specification
For further information, please refer to this article. We will continue to update this article regularly over the next couple of months, so please bookmark it and refer to the "Development Updates" section at the bottom for updates.
In this release
The first funding rule change to be released on the 10th June is to update any references to the "ESFA" to be replaced with "DfE". This includes all application documents.
Apprenticeship Application - Signature Upgrade
As announced in previous release notes, we have been working on upgrading the signature mechanism in the Apprenticeship application. This change is to ensure consistency with changes previously introduced to the review and OST enrolment document signing processes, and to ensure the highest levels of security and compliance.
For further information on the document signature mechanism please see this article.
Evidence Pack
In this release, there are a number of small enhancements to the Evidence Pack feature:
Permissions - We have updated permissions to ensure that users cannot request or download an evidence pack if they cannot usually view that learner's learning plan or application. In particular, we had some rare instances of Operations Managers being able to request packs for learners none of their trainers were mapped to.
New Apprenticeship signatures - The Application Evidence Pack has been updated to include the new signature method implemented in the Apprenticeship application. Documents with the old signature method will continue to display correctly in the pack.
Addition DPIA statement - We have added text to the card for packs ready to download encouraging the user to refer to your organisation's policies before storing or sharing any exported data.
Application Summary document - We have removed the link labelled "Eligibility & Additional Details" at the top of the page. This link was never intended to be on the document.
Training Plan document - We have renamed this file in the Application Evidence Pack so that they no longer refer to "Commitment Statement".
Size of download - We have made it clearer where the size of larger packs display in GB instead of MB.
Bug Fixes
In this release, we have fixed the following bugs:
User management performance issues - We have made a number of changes to help reduce the performance issues sometimes seen when viewing the "User Management" page. These changes are part of ongoing work to increase the overall responsiveness of the platform and site performance is being closely monitored.
Programme page displaying incorrect activities following programme edit and propagation - We have addressed an issue that may occur when programme activities are changed and propagated to existing learners. In some scenarios, activities were added that had a target finish month prior to the change (i.e. in the past).
Training plan not updating to show changes to activities - We have resolved an issue when activities are changed in the Training Plan via the application edit-flow and a Training Plan document generated as part of the flow. In some scenarios, the activities changed were not then reflected in the document and only activities present at first enrolment were shown. This behaviour was not seen when the “generate new Training Plan” option was used. Both routes now result in the correct display of activities in the document.
User management page error - We have fixed a UI issue where after clicking the “manage trainers” button and then subsequently closing the dialogue box that appears, the screen behind would appear blank instead of showing the select users screen as before.
Display of reduced/exempted OTJH hours in learning plan - We have made changes to how exempted activities are displayed on the learning plan. Prior to this release it was possible that the learning plan would show zero exempted hours of the actual OTJH exceeded the planned OTJH figure.
The learning plan will now show all exempted hours for activities added via the initial programme build and activities added manually subsequently. These will be included in the overall “total exempted OTJH” and “Programme Exempted (%)” fields. The logic for planned and actual OTJH fields will remain unchanged.
NB: To clarify to functionality we have re-named the field "Total Exempted OTJH" to help clarify that we are only referring to whole activities that have been exempted from the learning plan. This figure will not include any reduction of hours from activities that have not been exempted in the learning plan.
Business Intelligence - 11th June 2025 at 14:30
Management Reports
We have made a few enhancements to the management reports in this release.
Landing page filters – we have incorporated a filter pane on the main landing page of management reports, this will allow you to filter the key metrics present on this page to get a more detailed view. The filters available are:
- Operations manager
- Trainer
- Employer
- Programme type
- Programme name
- Standard name
We have also added a new slicer to some pages to allow you to filter out learners whose start date is in the future, this will allow you to view metrics without the skew from learners who have yet to start.
Standard Reports
We have added the future starts slicer to multiple pages across the standard reports allow you to filter out learners whose start date is in the future, this will allow you to view metrics without the skew from learners who have yet to start. This slicer is available in the following pages where logically, learners yet to start may be skewing the values:
- In flight learners
- OTJ Progress
- Activity Progress
- Learning Support
- Progress reviews
- Learning support reviews
- Active learning
Current Applications - OST learners
- OST Applications that do not yet have a learning plan are now included in the report.
- The Applications in Progress card now includes OST Applications in the Learner Enrolment status.
- When viewing the column graph by sector, we are now using the sector held on the Programme rather than the Application. This means OST Applications will have their sector shown rather than be categorised as (Blank).
ILR Reconciliation
We have included the field “Minimum required hours” to the planned hours reconciliation page in this report suite to aid monitoring of these hours and ensure that values are compliant with the DfE minimum required hours. Currently this is the calculated minimum value shown in the learner's application but will be adjusted to show new values for the 25/26 funding rules.
Data Warehouse Fields
In this release we have added two new views to the data warehouse.
Functional Skills Links
This view aims to link up Functional Skills in the Learning Plan to ILR fields enabling you to report on key additional metrics such as start and end dates of the aims. Please note, due to the complexity in the connections between Learning Plan aims and ILR aims, some fields in this table may be blank where the aims are unable to find a corresponding ILR aim. You should also be able to use this table to connect Functional Skills in Learning plans to additional relevant tables such as Reg&Cert joining on the relevant SKs.
Programme Activity Criteria
This view enables a relationship connection between Activities, Learning Outcomes and Criteria for the programme build, enabling you to check and review your Activity Assessment Criteria Mappings.
Below is a full list of new fields added to the data warehouse.
| Table Name | Column Name | Description | Data Type | Length of Column | Column is Nullable |
| ALS Plan | Learner Has Signed | Learner has signed the ALS Plan (0=No, 1=Yes) | bit | Yes | |
| ALS Plan | Learner Remote Signature Requested | Learner has been requested to sign the ALS Plan (0=No, 1=Yes) | bit | Yes | |
| ALS Plan | Learner Remote Signature Requested On | Date and time the learner was requested to sign the ALS Plan | datetime2 | Yes | |
| ALS Plan | Learner Signature TimeStamp | When the learner signed the ALS Plan | datetime2 | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | Activity Trainer Names | Concatenated List of all Trainers Repsonsible for the Functional Skills Activities | varchar | 500 | No |
| Functional Skills Links | Dim_Aims_SK | Metadata: Aim Surrogate Key | int | No | |
| Functional Skills Links | Dim_Apprentice_SK | Metadata: Apprentice Surrogate Key | int | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | Dim_Employer_SK | Metadata: Employer Surrogate Key | int | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | Dim_LearningPlan_SK | Metadata: Learning Plan Surrogate Key | int | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | Dim_Programme_SK | Metadata: Programme Surrogate Key | int | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | Dim_RegCert_SK | Metadata: Reg and Certs Surrogate Key | int | No | |
| Functional Skills Links | Dim_Trainer_SK | Metadata: Trainer Surrogate Key for the Primary Trainer | int | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | Functional Skill | Functional Skill Title and Level | varchar | 74 | Yes |
| Functional Skills Links | Functional Skill Status | Current Status of the Functional Skill | varchar | 11 | No |
| Functional Skills Links | ILR FundModel | FundModel from the ILR | int | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | ILR LearnAimRef | LearnAimRef from the ILR | varchar | 128 | Yes |
| Functional Skills Links | ILR LearningDeliveryID | LearningDeliveryId from the ILR | int | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | ILR LearnPlanEndDate | LearnPlanEndDate from the ILR | date | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | ILR LearnStartDate | LearnStartDate from the ILR | date | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | ILR Year | ILR Year | char | 7 | Yes |
| Functional Skills Links | LearningPlanId | Metadata: Bud Internal Learning Plan Id | uniqueidentifier | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | Percentage Complete | Percentage Complete of the Functional Skill | float | Yes | |
| Functional Skills Links | TrainingProviderId | Metadata: Bud Internal Trainer Provider Id | uniqueidentifier | Yes | |
| Programme Activity Criteria | Activity Name | Name of the activity | varchar | 255 | Yes |
| Programme Activity Criteria | Criteria Description | Description of the criteria to be met (capped at 255 characters) | varchar | 255 | Yes |
| Programme Activity Criteria | Criteria Number | Criteria Ordinal (order that criteria are listed) | varchar | 20 | Yes |
| Programme Activity Criteria | DW_CreationDateTime | Metadata: Date and time row in this bridge table was created. Note that rows are never updated, they are added or deleted as necessary | datetime2 | Yes | |
| Programme Activity Criteria | Learning Outcome Description | Description of the learning outcome (capped at 255 characters) | varchar | 255 | Yes |
| Programme Activity Criteria | Learning Outcome Number | Learning Outcome Ordinal (order that learning outcomes are listed) | int | Yes | |
| Programme Activity Criteria | ProgrammeActivityId | Bud Programme Activity Id (Activities related to a programme as opposed to activities linked to a learning plan) | uniqueidentifier | Yes | |
| Programme Activity Criteria | ProgrammeId | Bud Programme Id | uniqueidentifier | Yes | |
| Programme Activity Criteria | TrainingProviderId | Bud Training Provider Id | uniqueidentifier | No | |
| Programme Activity Criteria | Unique Reference | Unique Reference of the Learning Outcome | varchar | 10 | Yes |
| Programme Activity Criteria | Unit Key | Unit Key of the Learning Outcome | varchar | 25 |
Yes |
Note for ETL and Report developers
Following a consultation period on previous release notes, we are planning to remove [Presentation].[Application (Dates)] in the next release 09/07/2025, as this has for some time been superseded by [Presentation].[Application Status History]. Please get in contact your CSM urgently if you think this would cause you any difficulties in your ETL or own reporting suite so we can review before development commences.