Apprenticeship Funding Rules

The following updates will be released:

• Version 2 OTJT values
• New English & Maths section on the Training Plan document
• Updated residency questions in application
• Displaying care leaver information on the Applicant Summary document
• Re-ordering activities for durations less than 12 months
• Additional Foundation Apprenticeship labelling

Please see below for more information on each section.

OTJT version 2

In an additional release on Monday 28th July, we updated all minimum required OTJT values to align with those published by the DfE in version 2 of the funding rules.

These new values will be shown in the application as before.

English and Maths on the Training Plan

We have updated the Training Plan document so new English and Maths activity types are displayed in a different appendix.

From now, on all activities relating to the standard will be shown in Appendix A of the Training Plan. All English and Maths activities will be shown in Appendix B of the Training Plan.

Please note that only English and Maths activity types will be shown in Appendix B. So if you have an English or Maths activity that is a different activity type, such as "assignment", then these will continue to be shown in Appendix A.

If the chosen programme does not have any English or Maths activity types, then Appendix B will be hidden from the Training Plan.

Residency questions

We have updated the answer options for the residency question in Bud's application for the following:

One

From: UK national and have been ordinarily resident in the UK, British Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies for at least the previous three years before the start of the apprenticeship.

To: UK national and have been ordinarily resident in the UK and Islands or the British Overseas Territories for at least the previous three years before the start of the apprenticeship.

Two

From: Have the right of abode in the UK and have been ordinarily resident in the UK, British Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies for at least the previous three years before the start of the apprenticeship.

To: Have the right of abode in the UK and have been ordinarily resident in the UK and Islands or the British Overseas Territories for at least the previous three years before the start of the apprenticeship.

Three

From: A non-UK national with permission to live in the UK and have been ordinarily resident in the UK for at least the previous three years before the start of the apprenticeship and have permission from the UK government to live in the UK (not for educational purposes) or have obtained pre-settled or settled status under EU Settlement Scheme.

To: A non-UK national with permission to live in the UK and have been ordinarily resident in the UK and Islands for at least the previous three years before the start of the apprenticeship and have permission from the UK government to live in the UK (not for educational purposes)

Four

From: Afghan Relocation and Assistance policy (formerly known as Locally Engaged Staff under the intimidation policy)

To: Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP)
 

We have also added the following new answer options:

• Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS)
• Ukraine Permission Extension Scheme

Care leaver information

We have updated the Application Summary document so that the learner's care leaver status will always be shown on the document, regardless of whether they agree to share the information with their employer or not. As the employer can no longer see this document, there is no risk of showing them the information if the learner chooses not share it.

The rest of the platform will continue to work as before, so LDM code 362 will continue to be recorded in the ILR and no information will be exposed to the employer in the learning plan.

Re-ordering of activities for durations under 12 months

We have changed the behaviour of the activities in the application to ensure that all activities are contained within the chosen duration of the practical period, even if the programme default is longer.

For example, if the programme duration is 12 months but during the application the user chooses an end date which results in a practical period duration of 9 months, then any activities scheduled in the programme build for after month 9 will be re-planned to the 9th month for that learner.

Foundation Apprenticeships

We have added additional labelling for Foundation Apprenticeships in Bud. It will now show "Foundation App" instead of "Standard" in several places in the platform. This will apply to:

• The applicants list
• The learner list
• The learner's profile card on the learning plan
• The learner's dashboard if they have been invited to self-enrol

An example from the applicant's list:

An example from a learner's profile card in the learning plan:

Apprenticeship start date

We have updated the date picker on the "Select programme dates" page of the application so users cannot progress the application if they manually enter a date from the incorrect academic year.

For example, if the chosen academic year for the application is 2025/26, then the user will not be able to continue the application if they have manually typed in a date of 31/07/2025 or earlier.

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.

On Wednesday 30th July, we held a webinar on Bud's funding rule updates. You can see the recording here.

ILR Specification Updates

Bug Fixes

In this release, we have fixed the following bugs:

Initial Assessment Discussion page dependent questions - we have fixed a bug where users were prevented from progressing the application if the answer is changed from 'No' to 'Yes' without completing the dependent question to the parent question "Has Initial Assessment testing of English and maths been completed where relevant?"

Evidence Pack - in some rare instances where Portfolio evidence packs were failing to download, this was due to invalid characters being used in free text boxes on activities. We have updated the logic so invalid characters will be replaced with a space and the packs will download without erroring.

Rich Text Formatting - We have resolved a longstanding issue with the saving of hierarchy formatting (bullet points, numbering, etc.) in programme build. This compliments the recent work completed to resolve a similar issue in Activity Library and learning plan activities.  

Formatting applied via the rich text editor will control panel will persist when saved.

Formatting applied manually, such as using TAB and symbols to align, will not remain formatted when saved.

Platform Performance

We are continuing to work on improving the overall performance of the platform. Since the last release we have been working on making improvements to page/data load speeds, snapshot and signature stability, and activity propagation performance. We will continue to develop improvements in these, and related areas, in the knowledge that it will improve the user experience in Bud in the long-term. As developments are completed the release notes will contain details of where you can expect to see these improvements and any impact it will have on normal business processes. 

Coming Soon

Bud API Enhancements - We’re continuing work on enhancing our API capabilities to give you more flexibility and power when integrating with Bud. We’ll be sharing more soon, but in the meantime, you can get a preview of what’s coming in this article.

Business Intelligence - Thursday 7th August at 15:30

Funding Rules – OTJT Active Learning 

Following the updates made to the Standard reports and Learner insights in the last release, changes to the Active learning reporting in the Employer Reports have now been made. As a reminder, these adjustments affect 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

Funding Rules – English & maths Active Learning 

To aid monitoring of English & maths Active Learning, we have added an additional column to the Standard Reports > Functional Skills Report. This column details the last English or maths submission date to use alongside the overall functional skill information and help monitor progression for English and maths is as expected.

Funding Rules – Short durations reporting

With the introduction of new shorter durations for apprentices, we have introduced a new slicer across some of our pages in the standard reports to help you focus on these learners. The "Short Durations" slicer has been added to the overall In Flight Learners page as well as the Monthly starts page and can be used to filter between

• Durations < 8 months (Can be used to identify compliance issues before ILR submissions)
• Durations < 12 months
• Durations > 12 months

Missing Signatures - Programme Details

We have added programme name to the application missing signatures report. During this change we have also adjusted the original matrix presentation of this table to a flat table to make scrolling and viewing more consistent. The data in here may look a little different when first viewing however it is the same as before and should now be easier to scroll between detail.

Data Warehouse Fields

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