August 2025 release notes

When a tutor or learner visits the Checkpoint summary reports, they can now access checkpoint data from both current and previous programmes within the summary reports. This will enable better tracking of learner progress over time. The default filter in the Checkpoint summary report will be the current programme only - the filter can then be amended to include previous programmes.

Programme filter added to filters

Programme name added to the grid

Funding dashboard

When an admin is reviewing data in the Learner aims, status & funding data table on the Funding details page of the funding report and they want to quickly access a specific learner aim's ILR page in Aptem to validate data or take action, they can now use the new ILR URL field. This field provides a direct hyperlink to the relevant learner aim's ILR page, allowing admins to seamlessly navigate without needing to leave the report or manually search for learners aim elsewhere in the system. This field has also been added to the Funding revenue by month table on the Funding details page, when drilling down to the detailed information.
 

Funding dashboard – enhanced group filter with parallel structure support

When an admin is using the Funding data tab in the Funding dashboard and they want to manage user visibility across multiple group hierarchies, they can now use the updated Groups user filter, which supports parallel structures. The filter and visualisations will only include the groups and learners the user has access to. Learners will appear in all group structures they belong to and are visible to the user, which means they may appear more than once in detail tables. However, KPIs and overall counts will reflect each learner uniquely, ensuring accurate, non-duplicated reporting.
 

Funding dashboard – now handles multiple funding values using effective dates

When an admin is using the Funding dashboard and they want to view accurate funding values per learning aim, they can now benefit from improved handling of multiple values based on effective from and to dates. This ensures the correct funding value is applied for each learning aim based on its delivery date.
 

Funding dashboard - learner identifier update – ULN replaced with LRN (no longer duplicated)

When an admin is reviewing learner records and they want to ensure the correct identifiers are displayed, they can now see the Learner Reference Number (LRN) in place of the previously duplicated Unique Learner Number (ULN). The ULN is still available where appropriate, but the display now correctly includes both identifiers without duplication, reflecting the intended use of each.

Funding report – reflects short aims accurately

When an admin is using the Funding report and they want to review funding data for learners returning from a break in learning, they can now see aims with very short durations, those lasting less than a month, accurately reflected. This resolves an issue where short-duration aims were previously excluded, particularly in cases where learners briefly returned to complete their learning.

Quality dashboard – hybrid end year calculation updated

When an admin is using the Quality dashboard and they want to align with UK government guidance on hybrid end year reporting, they can now rely on the dashboard using the maximum of Planned end date, Actual end date, Achievement date, and Reporting date. This update ensures consistency with official definitions and improves the accuracy of QAR-related reporting.

Quality dashboard – updated QAR target and pass rate display

When an admin is using the Quality dashboard and they want to assess provider performance against national expectations, they can now see updated targets for both QAR and retention based on the Department for Education's accountability framework. The primary QAR target remains at 60% (“Needs Improvement”), and a new lower threshold of 50% has been added to indicate when a provider is “At Risk”. For retention, an “At Risk” threshold has been introduced at 52%. These thresholds are reflected in the dashboard’s colour-coded data tables for clearer visual insight. The pass rate target has been removed, as no official benchmark is currently published.
 

Quality dashboard – QAR years rolled forward to Include 2025/26

When an admin is using the Quality dashboard and they want to review QAR data for the most recent academic years, they can now access figures for the 2025/26 year. This update ensures the dashboard stays current and supports forward-looking analysis and planning.

Quality dashboard – enhanced group filter with parallel structure support

When an admin is using the Quality dashboard and they want to manage user visibility across multiple group hierarchies, they can now use the updated Groups user filter, which supports parallel structures. The filter and visualisations will only include the groups and learners the user has access to. Learners may appear more than once in detail tables if they belong to multiple structures, but KPIs and summary metrics continue to count each learner only once, ensuring accurate reporting.

Quality dashboard – new user filters added to 'Delivery by Qualification' page

When an admin is using the Quality dashboard and they want to refine their analysis on the 'Delivery by Qualification' page, they can now filter the data using two new user filters: ILR status and Learning status. These additions provide greater flexibility when exploring qualification delivery, enabling more targeted insights based on learner or aim-level status.

When an admin user is utilising the 'Enrol users' pop-up to add learner information, they will now see the field previously labelled 'Planned Hours' clearly renamed to 'Planned OTJT hours'. This change helps reduce the risk of audit errors by making it unequivocally clear that the hours entered into this field are specifically for Off-the-Job Training (OTJT). It may impact how administrators interpret and input planned hours during the user enrolment process, and users may need to familiarise themselves with this updated field name to ensure accurate data entry and compliance.

Learners assessments are now linked to cohorts that are associated with the academic year identifier that was current at the time of the assessment. This is in line with Century’s updates for the new academic year. 

Note that in Aptem, users will not notice a difference. In Century, administrators will continue to see the academic year the learner assessment relates to.

To ensure customer connections to Aptem remain secure and to keep up with industry best practices, we have deprecated the following TLS 1.2 cipher suites used by older browsers:

• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256
• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384

For more information, see: Deprecation of CBC-based cipher suites.

• When a user is managing and monitoring apprenticeships throughout the system to ensure data accuracy and compliance, they can now see the correct minimum required Off-The-Job Training (OTJT) hours displayed consistently across all relevant screens for apprenticeships starting on or after 01/08/2025. This change corrects an issue where an outdated calculation for minimum OTJT was being used in some areas, which caused user concern. Additionally, this update ensures that English and Maths (EM) hours are no longer incorrectly counted in any totals or dashboard widgets that are specific to OTJT. This fix provides a more accurate and reliable view of OTJT data throughout the system. It may impact how OTJT hours and minimums are viewed in dashboards and other programme overview screens, but it is important to note that this issue did not impact compliance documents or the initial programme setup. Users will benefit from this improved data consistency and will no longer need to raise concerns about mismatched figures.
• Resolved a performance issue affecting the Skills radar assessment functionality, where saving changes to each characteristic was taking 30-40 seconds. Now, this time is reduced to 2-3 seconds.
• When an admin user attempts to update a learner's country of birth, residence, or nationality via the API for a learner account that is not a 'Fulluser' (i.e., not yet activated), they will now receive an explicit '400 Bad Request' error with the message "User's subscription status must be FullUser". Previously, the API would incorrectly return a '200 OK' status, implying the update was successful when, in fact, the data had not been written. This change applies the correct approach to this API, providing a clear indication and specific reason when updates cannot be processed for these fields on inactive accounts. It may impact admin workflows for API-based data updates, and users may need to ensure learner accounts have a 'Fulluser' subscription status before attempting to update these specific fields via API if they wish for the data to be written.
• When an admin using the synchronisation functionality tries to apply changes on more than 2089 students, they will receive a more friendly message "Too many learners have been selected. Please synchronise no more than 2,089 learners at a time." This is when they exceed SQL’s limit of parameters in a query.
• When an admin is reviewing learners' completed Aptem Assess assessments and they want to check the quality and category of the assessment they can continue to retrieve this information from the Quality score and Assessment category fields and rely on the system to automatically calculate this data.
• We have fixed a performance issue where the 'Copy from another programme' option in the reviews token of a programme build was slow to load the list of programmes. Now, the list will take less than 1 second to load.

We are working towards our next iteration of the Aptem Enhance marking aid and feedback assistant features. 

An upcoming update will let admins link a new version of an existing marking aid exercise to the learning plan component while keeping all AI-generated feedback history. This will give Admins the option to apply updates to an exercise to all learners or only new enrolments moving forward, avoiding inconsistencies in completed work and removing the need to recreate components. A dedicated marking aid management screen will show all exercises and the learners assigned to them.

We are introducing manual checkpoints in onboarding to support initial assessment of apprenticeship KSBs.

We are introducing a new way to track and monitor actions in reviews. The new section will allow users to set time-bound actions for the learner, monitor these at each review and mark them as complete when necessary.

We're excited to announce that we'll soon begin development on a brand-new off-the-job hours logging feature. Our goal is to provide a more intuitive and efficient way for apprentices to record all their learning hours, making it easier to track progress and ensure compliance. This functionality will also offer improved oversight and reporting for providers. We're actively engaging with customers through design review sessions, and there will be further opportunities to get involved and provide your valuable feedback as development progresses.