Inclusion and Support

Inclusion and Support in Enrolment

Continuing our process of additional inclusion and support questions in enrolment, we have added new questions to the Additional Personal Details page.

The questions will be added to 26/27 applications only.

If an in-progress application already has a learner signature on the Applicant Summary document, the new questions will not be displayed. However, if an in-progress application does not have a learner signature on the Applicant Summary document, the new questions will be displayed.

In the next release on 22 October, we will release the equivalent set of questions for learner self-enrolment. This will allow learners to provide their answers directly for you to review.

For details of the questions added, please see this article.

Evidence Your Learner Support Planning with Confidence

Support plans now guide staff through each stage of planning, from how a need was identified to the impact if support isn't provided, with set review dates so nothing slips. The result is consistent, inspection-ready evidence of the Assess, Plan, Do, Review approach Ofsted expects, and a clear record behind any funded support. Learner Support - Plan

Key Learner Needs Now Visible on the Learner Support Page

Information about a learner's needs, captured during enrolment, can now be viewed on the Learner Support page, so there's no need to go back through the enrolment record to find it. This includes whether the learner has anything that might affect their learning, what helps them learn best, whether they had an EHCP, and whether they were eligible for free school meals.

Support Plan Flags Now Show Funding Status, and a New Wellbeing Flag Highlights Open Concerns

The support plan flag now shows whether a learner’s support plan is funded or is a non-funded, enhanced support plan. A new Wellbeing flag also shows on the learner record and learner list when a wellbeing concern is open for that learner, so staff can quickly see at a glance who may need extra support.

Asperger’s Removed from the List of Disabilities

Asperger's syndrome is no longer a valid option in the ILR, so it has been removed from the disabilities list and can no longer be selected. Existing learner records that already hold this option are unchanged.

Filter and Sort Concerns, and See Wellbeing Reviews, All on the Learner Wellbeing Page

Concerns on the Learner Wellbeing page can now be filtered by outstanding actions, status and severity, and sorted by newest or oldest first, making it quicker to focus on the concerns that need attention.

A new table also lists all of the learner’s wellbeing reviews, with a link to open each one directly, so there’s no need to search elsewhere for them.  

Inclusion - Wellbeing Concerns Log

CENTURY Integration

OST Applications

We are pleased to say that we have extended our integration with CENTURY so that OST applications can now have automated Initial Assessments with CENTURY.

The integration will work in the same way as the Apprenticeship applications, and if you have already set up your tenancy’s integration then you won’t need to do anything new to take advantage of the OST integration.

For more information, please read the following articles:

• Setting up the CENTURY integration
• Enabling CENTURY at programme design
• Using CENTURY in OST Enrolments
• Bud's webinar with CENTURY, including a demo and FAQs

Bud Assist

Pedagogy Selection to Shape Responses

This will allow a provider to select which of the four pedagogy approaches they would like the Bud Assist tool to respond in, when working with the learners. The Bud Assist tool will be able to tailor its responses based on the pedagogy approach selected, ensuring the learner is getting the best/most appropriate response to the programme they are studying. You can find more information on this enhancement here: Choosing a Pedagogy for Your Programme

Create Activity with Bud Assist

Bud Assist can now help you create an activity!

This latest feature will allow a trainer/programme builder to have the ability to have Bud Assist build an activity (details and description) based on the programme and KSBs (where known). This feature will reduce the time it takes for a programme to be built in Bud, allowing Bud Assist to suggest activity details. You can find more information on this enhancement here: Creating an activity with Bud Assist

Enhance Trainer Feedback

This has now been further improved to bring in the context of the activity/programme and KSBs that are relevant to the feedback.

This will further enhance the feedback given to ensure it is more relevant and contextualised. More information on this feature can be found here: Bud Assist – Enhance Trainer Feedback

Bug Fixes

In this release we have resolved the following bugs:

• Apprenticeship enrolment - In some cases, signatures were being reset due to the addition of new inclusion questions. This has been resolved.
• macOS/Safari does not calculate programme duration correctly - We have resolved an issue where a trainer accessing Bud through an Apple device, using the Safari browser, may be unable to proceed past the ‘Set Programme Dates’ page of an application.
• Editing mapped criteria on completed OST activities - Attempting to edit mapped criteria on a completed activity in an Other Skills and Training (OST) programme returned an error. This is now fixed; mapped criteria can be edited on completed OST activities in the same way as apprenticeship programmes.
• Approving hours results in the screen jumping - We’ve resolved a minor UI issue, whereby the process to approve hours in the log jumps the page to the bottom once approved.

Business Intelligence Release - 14th October 2026 (3:45pm)

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

Admin Reporting Now Available

We’re pleased to introduce the new Admin Report, available to all customers from this release. It covers the administrative side of Bud, from your processes to platform configuration.

You’ll recognise some content, such as programme and employer management, from the Standard Reports suite. There are also new additions for monitoring how specific features are used in your tenancy.

Designed for team members who don’t work directly with learners, the report gives them what they need without exposing the large volume of learner data held in Standard Reports. That means you can share it across teams without the risk of oversharing. It also gives us room to grow this area and offer more insight into how you use the platform.

The report includes:

• Programme and activity management
• Employer management
• User management and security
• Feature switch usage
• Usage reports for Turnitin, Bud Assist and Evidence Pack downloads

Please note: the Admin Report permission will be available to select after the release on Tuesday 13 October, but the report itself won’t be viewable until the Business Intelligence release on Wednesday 14 October. Please wait until the BI release is complete before enabling the permission.

For more information, see our Helpdesk Article

Standard Reports

We’ve made a few changes to Standard Reports to support the new Wellbeing Review type and other recent platform updates.

• Wellbeing Reviews now appear in review reporting.
• You can now distinguish between the Primary Trainer and Review Trainer in review reporting.

Employer Reports

We’ve added new fields to planned hours reporting in Employer Reports, giving more context to the risk ratings shown:

• Percent through Programme
• Required Hours
• Planned Hours
• Completed Hours
• Required Hours Progress
• Planned Hours Progress

Bug Fixes

In this release we have resolved the following bugs:

• Training Plan signatures in Custom Data Exports - We’ve resolved an issue where training plan signature fields were pulling through incorrectly in Custom Data Exports. They now pull through correctly, and no changes to your templates are needed.

Data Warehouse fields

Inclusion & Support in enrolment

This release adds multiple new fields across application tables to support the addition to the new inclusion and support questions in enrolment

Concern log & Actions

We have also added new tables to bring in the Inclusion Concerns and Inclusion Concern Actions recorded in the wellbeing concern log

A full list of new fields added to the Datawarehouse, including those mentioned above, can be found below;