Bud Assist for Learners 

We're pleased to introduce Bud Assist for Learners, an AI-powered virtual coach designed to provide learners with instant, 24/7 support throughout their learning journey.

Using advanced agentic AI, learners can ask questions about their programme, learning activities, reviews and progression opportunities, receiving contextual answers whenever they need them. Bud Assist helps improve learner engagement by providing immediate, on-demand guidance without waiting for trainer availability.

Available Now

• 24/7 AI-powered support for learners.
• Answers questions relating to programmes, learning activities, reviews and further learning.
• Available to all Enterprise clients.
• Can currently be enabled across all programmes.

Coming Soon

• Programme-level controls – Choose which programmes have Bud Assist enabled.
• Trainer conversation history – Allow trainers to view learner conversations, providing greater insight and enabling more personalised support.
• AI-powered safeguarding – Bud Assist will identify, categorise, and raise potential safeguarding concerns from learner conversations, supporting faster intervention and stronger safeguarding processes.

Getting Started

Bud Assist for Learners is available to all Enterprise clients. To enable the feature, please contact your Customer Success Manager, and for more information please see our helpdesk article here.

CENTURY Initial Assessments

We are pleased to announce the launch of our new initial assessment (IA) integration with CENTURY.

This release will enable you to add CENTURY IAs in English, maths, and digital skills to your Apprenticeship programmes.

For more information on how to use CENTURY in Bud, please read the following articles:

• Setting up the CENTURY integration
• Enabling CENTURY in programme design
• Using CENTURY in enrolment

To help you update your initial assessments on your existing programmes, we have extended the edit programmes functionality to include the 'Initial Assessments' section of the 'Functional Skills' tab, making it easy for you to add CENTURY to your Apprenticeship programmes.

For a full demo of the CENTURY integration, including a demo of the CENTURY platform and services, you can watch this webinar.

Please note that we will extend the integration to OST enrolments in a future release.

Funding Rule Updates

We have added the 2026-27 academic year to the Apprenticeship enrolment workflow in preparation for new enrolments from 1st August.

We have also provided validation ensuring that if you select the 2026-27 academic year for an application, the start date must not be before 01/08/2026.

Please note that for now, the 2026-27 enrolment workflow continues the rules from the 2025-26 enrolment workflow. We will continue to apply updates to the 2026-27 workflow in July.

For further information on the funding rule updates, please see this article.

HRS3 (Actual Hours) field in ILR

In preparation for the 26/27 academic year, we recently pre-released the new Hours Entity as a collection of fields in the ILR. As per the release notes for this introduction, NO data will be exported in the ILR XML file until the 26/27 file is available to download on 01/08/26.

We have, however, made changes to the behaviour of the HRS3 field from this release to only show a value once the learner has been marked as complete. This mirrors the current behaviour of the "Actual Hours" field, which the new HRS3 field replaces for 26/27 onwards.

You will no longer see a value populating in the HRS3 field until such point as the learner is marked as complete. Logic regarding the output of this data has NOT changed, and it will not appear in the 25/26 ILR

Standard Version Changes

We have updated the edit workflow so that when a learner changes to a new Apprenticeship standard version, the updated Apprenticeship Agreement and Training Plan documents will display the updated version number, as per the learning plan.

Assessments in the Library

You can now build, edit, and publish assessments directly in the Content Library, with full version history. This will mean assessments can be built once and reused, rather than recreated in every learning plan.

Our next phase, which we've already started on, allows you to import assessments into your programmes, so that they are automatically applied to learning plans during enrolment.

See more information in this article.

Edit assessment criteria mapping on completed activities 

Previously, once an activity was marked complete, its mapped assessment criteria were fixed. If a trainer mapped the wrong criteria, or missed some, there was no way to correct it after the fact without reopening the activity itself.

Operations Managers, IQAs, and Compliance Admins can now edit criteria mapping directly on a completed submission. From the submission view, select "View criteria" to add or remove mapped criteria without needing to unlock or redo the activity.

This gives training providers more control over assessment accuracy after the event, reducing rework and keeping records aligned with what was actually assessed.

See more information in this article.

Coming soon: clearer visual flagging of unmapped criteria, with the Progress Record updated to reflect this.

Completion Override for Learners in End-Point Assessment 

Assessment reforms are removing End-Point Assessment from standards, and providers need a clean way to close out affected learners.

The override complete function has always been available from the Learner Overview page for other learner states, and it is now available to those in an End-Point Assessment status. So, providers can mark them complete without workarounds, keeping completion data and reporting accurate as reforms roll out across your cohorts.

Business Intelligence Release - 8th July 2026 @ 3:45pm

Please note your reports may be blank for a brief time afterwards 

Accountability Framework – Past Planned End Date

Following a change from the DfE to this Accountability Framework metric, this report now identifies learners whose planned end date has passed and whose learning actual end date is not populated. 

Previously, it only looked at learners with a Past Planned End Date and a completion status of 1. This means EPA learners should no longer inflate the PPED Accountability Framework measure, so we've removed the elements in the report that were previously added to help identify these learners specifically.

ILR Compliance Reports - FRMs

Following feedback on the legacy DfE off-the-job training hours calculation, we've made an adjustment to FRM37 to stop it incorrectly flagging some part-time learners. 

The previous calculation used actual working hours to identify the minimum requirement, but the DfE does not have visibility of actual hours, and as a result the number of learners appearing on this report was inflated specifically for part-time learners. To aid with year end processes, we have temporarily removed part time learners from this FRM to ease administrative burden. As always, the DfE FRMs are final however this change should allow you to continue to work proactively ahead of submission.

Coming Soon: Consolidated Reporting Beta

Training provider groups will soon be able to access consolidated, group-level reporting through a single Power BI report, bringing together data from all subsidiary providers within the group into one unified view.

This means group users no longer need to combine reports manually from each individual provider, giving faster, clearer access to headline insights across the whole group.

We have been working closely with some of our group customers to build this reporting solution, which will be available shortly. If you think multi-tenancy group-level reporting could be of benefit to you, please contact your Customer Success Manager for more information.

Data Warehouse fields

The following Data Warehouse fields have been added in this release to support enhanced reporting and analysis.