In this session, we unpack the complexities of the 25/26 Apprenticeship funding rules and translate them into actionable insights. This year saw major changes to policy, including a new minimum duration and a new approach to off the job hours.
Senior Product Owner Matt Wood and industry expert Rupert Crossland discussed the changes to the 2025/26 Apprenticeship Funding Rules.
Here is the full recording of the webinar:
Questions & Answers
An overview of the questions asked during the webinar that were not answered live:
Answers provided by Rupert Crossland
Question: Within the funding rules 27.7 evidence it states we must retain evidence of 'confirmation of the apprentices date of birth'.
Answer: This rule is required in the 2024-25 rules and is unchanged in the 2025-26 rules so did not need to feature as one of the changes that we covered in the webinar.
Question: If English & Maths is declined for a 19+ learner do we need a signed declaration from learner and employer?
Answer: If it was declined for an existing learner on programme as of 19 February, yes you would. If it was declined by a learner who started after 19 February, the training plan should confirm that English and maths have declined, and signature of the training plan will meet this requirement.
Question: Can I just check, does that mean that an apprentice working 20 hours a week for example can still do the apprenticeship over the same duration as one doing 35 hours a week? And do we still need to capture the data of how many hours a week they work?
Answer: Yes, provided they can complete the minimum off-the job hours.
Question: Just to clarify the minumum OTJH per standard are paused until 2026?
Answer: We are waiting to see whether the DfE to confirm this in writing. Until then, no, we must work on the basis that they will take effect from August. Providers must be alert to any announcement on this from DfE.
Question: You mentioned that we should follow the assessment plans in terms of minimum duration. Do we expect that all relevant assessment plans will all be updated with the new 8 month minimum duration by the 1st August? If not, do we continue as normal until they have been updated?
Answer: It seems highly unlikely that they will be updated by 1 August. Assessment plan review is a very lengthy and detailed process. Until such time as they are, or unless there is a blanket rule change on their enforcement, the minimums still apply. Do though note that some assessment plans have minimum durations, and some have typical durations.
Question: Does the change in phrasing to Assessment from End Point Assessment apply to all apprenticeship programmes currently live or those starting from 1st August 2025?
Answer: Starts from 1 August 2025.
Answers provided by Matt Wood
Question: Can you confirm at what stage the academic year selection will be made?
- Will this selection occur at the point of creating a stub record, therefore becoming mandatory in order to create an application?
- Will this selection occur after the stub record has been created, therefore not impacting the creation of an application initially?
Answer: The academic year selection will be made when creating the stub record for a new applicant. It will be on the page where you add the learner’s name and email address.
You will then be able to amend that selection on the main overview page of the application, so you are not stuck with your original answer.
Please watch out for future release notes for more information.
Question: Is it possible / will it be possible to extend Apprenticeship Agreements in Bud where learners go past their planned end date?
Answer: You can use the existing application edit flow to create a new Apprenticeship Agreement. You can enter a new end date in the edit flow to update the date on the document. We are considering further developments to make this easier, if time permits.
Question: In order for employers to confirm the duration is 'reasonable' will Bud help identify how many hours per week are planned?
Bud will retain the existing logic to use the settings in programme design and the learner’s working hours to determine a planned end date. You will then be able to change the planned end date, if you wish.
Question: Are we going to have to rebuild programmes?
Answer: You will not need to rebuild programmes to add the new English & Maths activity types. You can use the edit live programmes functionality to make these changes for Apprenticeships.
Existing activities created in the Activity Library can be amended so you can covert the type to the new English & Maths activity type.
Question: Hi Matt you mentioned that the new active learning for F/s will be added as a type to the programme activities. Do we need to add that into our existing programme builds ahead of the changes for August? Also just to clarify the new active learning activities will only have a month and year applied not a full date?
If we have a learner who starts on the 20/3/25 and we want to start the F/S 3 months in advance the system with set the date to 20/6/25 regardless of whether this is a weekend or not. Is there any plan to change this as a result of the new additions to the F/S.
Answer: If you would like to add new activity types for English/maths learning, then yes you will need to add these to your current programmes. You can use the edit live programmes functionality to do this once we have released the new activity types. We are aiming to release these in our next release on 8th July.
We are considering changes to managing individual aims in the application. We would like to introduce the ability to set specific start & end dates for each aim in the programme during the application. This is dependent on having time to make these changes alongside the key funding rule changes and will not be in time for 1st August, if at all. We’ll provide further updates in the future.