Apprenticeship Funding Rules

The following updates will be released:

• Ability to edit the minimum required OTJ during application
• Additional compliance questions on the Initial Assessment Discussion page
• Updated "commitments" on the Training Plan
• Foundation Apprenticeships

Please see below for more information on each section.
 

Editing the Minimum OTJ in Application

As the DfE have confirmed that RPL reductions should be applied to both the planned hours and the minimum required, we have added an extra section at the bottom of the "Review programme activities" page of the application to display the minimum required OTJ. You will also have the ability to manually enter a new minimum OTJ value to account for any RPL reductions.

You can use the "Total Exempted OTJH" value to determine your new minimum required value. So in the example above:

• Standard's minimum required = 509
• Total exempted OTJH = 10
• Manually enter new minimum OTJ value = 499

If you enter a new minimum value, this will be displayed on the Apprenticeship Agreement and Training Plan documents. If you do not enter a new minimum value as there's no RPL reduction, then the published standard's minimum will be used instead.

Please note that this work was completed prior to version 2 of the funding rules where further clarity was provided on how to amend OTJ values for RPL reductions. Now it is clear that the same number of hours should be reduced from the minimum as the planned, we will look to automate this reduction for you in a future release.

Minimum OTJ values

We are aware that version 2 of Annex C has been published by the DfE with new OTJ values for a number of standards. Unfortunately, that update came too late for us to update these values in time for this release, however we are actively working on updating those values now and we will publish an update to align with the new DfE values before 01/08/2025.

Between now and the v2 update, you can use the above functionality to manually enter a minimum OTJ value that matches the DfE's spreadsheet.

Initial Assessment Discussion

We have made a few changes to the compliance questions on the Initial Assessment Discussion page of the application.

• New question 1 - "Does the employer agree that the planned duration and plan of training is realistic?"
• New question 2a - "Has Initial Assessment testing of English and maths been completed where relevant?"
• New question 2b - "Please provide details of the outcome of the initial assessment testing and how it will impact on the apprenticeship."

The questions and answers will be displayed on the Training Plan document in the existing "Initial Assessment Discussion" section.

Please note that these questions are mandatory to answer and will be shown on all applications, including for existing learners going through the application edit workflow. It is also possible that some in-progress applications at the time of this release will have signatures reset on the Apprenticeship Agreement and Training Plan documents if the application has not reached the "Committed" status. This is to ensure that these new questions are answered and displayed on the documents.

Updated "Commitments" on the Training Plan

We have updated the "commitments" on the Training Plan document with the following:

• New commitment on the Employer section - "Confirm that the apprentice has a contract of employment that covers the duration of the apprenticeship, including EPA."
• New commitment on the Employer section - "Confirm that if the apprentice is a prisoner or prison leaver, that they have completed and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)."
• Updated commitment on the Employer section. From - "To agree to adhere to all parts of the signed Training Plan" to "To agree to adhere to all parts of the signed Training Plan and agree that the training expectations are realistic."

These commitments will be displayed on any new Training Plan documents created, including new versions generated via the application edit flow for existing learners.

Foundation Apprenticeships

We have created a new programme type in Bud for Foundation Apprenticeships. This will allow you to create and track Foundation Apprenticeships separately to your regular Apprenticeship provision.

For now, Foundation Apprenticeships will behave in the same was as Standards. You will be able to use them in the Apprenticeship application workflow and you will have all the benefits of Standards.

For more information on how to create a programme, please see this article.

At the time of this release, we have not added any additional eligibility checks to the application process for Foundation Apprenticeships. However, in the next release we intend to add some, including:

• A warning when the learner is aged 25+
• A warning when the learner does not agree to share information with their employer (for either a EHCP or prison leaver)

We have created Foundation Apprenticeships for the following standard:

• Health and social care (FA0007)

If you require a different Foundation Apprenticeship not listed above, you can request this by following the steps in this article.

Further Funding Rule Updates

We are continuing work on further updates relating to the new Apprenticeship funding rules. You can find out more about future developments by following this article.

Unfortunately, we are unable to release the planned update to create a new section on the Training Plan document for the new English and Maths activity types. An issue was found during testing and we didn't want to release with this issue. We will aim to include this update in the next release on 6th August. However, English and Maths activities will still be shown in Appendix A of the Training Plan document.

ILR Specification Updates

In this release, we will complete the required ILR specification updates required for the 25/26 academic year. Full details of the changes in this release and previous releases can be found in the below knowledgebase article.

Updated 25/26 ILR fields/codes will be available to select in the ILR screen from the release.

2025-26 ILR Specification Changes

Ability to change an applicant's employer

We are introducing the ability to change the Employer that is linked to an Applicant, up to the point at which the Application's Training Plan document has been signed by all three parties.  

You can change the Employer within the Employer Details tab of an Application. As per the normal process, if you change the Employer before the Training Plan is fully signed, previous signatures will be reset as the documents will have a material change in the Employer details.  

This provides you with far greater flexibility when errors are made or details change and means you don’t have to recreate applications because of this. 

Post release, you will be able to change the Employer on new and existing applicants in Bud.

For further information, please see the articles below:

• Enrolment - High Level Eligibility - Create a Stub Record and Check Eligibility
• Enrolment - Add Additional Details

Employer contact displays on document signature box

Based on customer feedback we have now added the employer email address to the employer signature box on the enrolment documents so that it is clear who the currently selected employer contact. If the “change” button is used and a new contact is selected then the employer details will update to reflect this.

This change will display the current employer selected; this is not necessarily the contact that was selected when any previous requests to sign by email were last sent (i.e. it is possible contact A was sent the request to sign, then changed to contact B with no further request to sign – contact B would be displayed. If a new request to sign is sent, it will be sent to the contact displayed). 

Bug Fixes

In this release, we have fixed the following bugs:

Learning Planned End Date changes in crossover - We have corrected a bug which has previously surfaced in the cross-over period only where a change to a learner’s planned date after 01/08 would only update the current ILR year and not the previous year also.  

Activities being reset when a learner’s programme build is changed - We have resolved a bug where changes made to an activity in the activity library, correctly populate through to learning plan, but on entering the edit-flow subsequently the previous version of the activity is displayed. Users will now see changes made to a programme activity reflected in their learning plan regardless of whether they have subsequently gone through the edit-flow process (subject to defined propagation rules).

This is a “fix-forward” scenario meaning this behaviour will not be seen from the release onwards, but it may mean that learners who previously had activities reverted to an earlier version will still require manual correction to resolve. 

Rich Text editor formatting - We have addressed an issue that affects a small number of areas in the platform that allow rich text editing. When using rich text formatting such as bullet points and indents these were not always saving as expected. 

Previously affected areas of rich text may need to be re-formatted and re-saved post release to ensure that they display as expected. Formatting changes will only be saved when using the editors' in-built options for bullet points and indents etc, not when added created manually. 

Platform Performance - We’ve made backend changes aimed at improving platform stability and responsiveness, particularly during busy periods. Previously, certain background activity may have contributed to delays in data consistency and occasional errors during key processes. This update is intended to reduce that impact and we will continue monitoring performance to ensure ongoing improvements.

Business Intelligence - Wednesday 23rd July @ 15:30

Funding Rules – OTJT Active Learning 

We’ve made important updates to the Active Learning report within the standard report suite to align with the new Off-the-Job Training (OTJT) Active Learning rules. These adjustments impact how the Last Active Learning Date is calculated and apply only to new learners starting from 01/08/2025 onwards. The calculations are now run as follows:

For learners with a start date before 01/08/2025, the last active learning date is calculated as the most recent of:

• the last submission made against an activity by the learner
• the last approved Off the Job Hours from the log
• the last English or maths in OTJH Log - where submitted OTJH were rejected as "English and/or maths"

For learners with a start date on or after 01/08/2025, the last active learning date is calculated as the most recent of:

• the last submission made against an activity by the learner where the activity type is not English or Maths
• the last approved Off the Job Hours from the log

These changes have also been reflected in the Learner Insights metrics, ensuring consistency across reporting. We are hoping the updates will also be rolled out to Employer Reporting in the next release. Looking ahead, we're actively exploring ways to better support monitoring of the new English and Maths Active Learning rule to help providers stay compliant and informed. 

Learners starting from 01/08/2025 will follow the new rule in reporting whith learners before that date retaining the original rule. 

Data Warehouse Fields

In this release we have added the below new fields to the data warehouse.