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An ancient oak tree glowing in the last light of dusk

Apprenticeship management software & e-portfolio

Grown from evidence. Built to last.

OAKS stands for Outstanding, Achievable, Knowledgeable and Supportive.

The quality-first platform for training providers, colleges and universities. Encode your standard as rules, see cohort risk before the review meeting, and know every piece of evidence is authentic.

Book a free demo Explore features

Need procurement specifications, tender docs or have a question? Contact our team directly.

An acorn split open, a glowing shoot rising from its kernel

Inside every learner

A mighty oak, waiting to grow.

Every apprentice starts as potential. Oaks gives tutors, IQA, employers and leaders one living record to nurture it, from first evidence to gateway and beyond.

  • Evidence & KSBs
  • Quality & IQA
  • Delivery & Reviews
  • Integrity & Trust

Put down roots

Four roots. One living record.

Oaks is built around what actually decides an apprenticeship: the evidence, the quality of the judgement behind it, the people who deliver it and the integrity of it all.

01

Evidence & KSBs

Every knowledge, skill and behaviour, with the proof mapped beside it.

  • Knowledge Grove
  • Tasks & Training Plans
  • Adaptive Diagnostics
  • Oaks Ascend
  • Gateway Packs & EPA Results
  • Skills England Sync

02

Quality & IQA

Your standard encoded as rules, with risk surfaced before the review meeting.

  • Consistency Rule Engine
  • Learner RAG
  • IQA Engine
  • Ofsted Workspace
  • Ofsted AI
  • OBTLA AI
  • Quality Hub
  • Oaks Snapshot

03

Delivery & Reviews

Tutors, learners and employers working one live record, not three inboxes.

  • Live Progress Reviews
  • Off-the-Job Hours
  • Action List
  • Employer Portal
  • Enrolment & Skillscan
  • Reports Library
  • Messaging & Policies
  • Shaped to Your Organisation

04

Integrity & Trust

Authentic evidence and a platform your auditors can trust.

  • AI Assessment Integrity
  • Secure by Design
  • Welfare, Prevent & British Values

The Knowledge Grove

Everything that grows inside Oaks

Every feature marked live is in the product today. Roadmap items are labelled honestly.

Live

Evidence & KSBs

Knowledge Grove

A KSB-first evidence drawer. Learners see every knowledge, skill and behaviour and exactly what proves it.

What’s inside

  • KSB-centred evidence map
  • Evidence items, links and comments
  • Video upload pipeline
  • Evidence annotator
Live

Evidence & KSBs

Tasks & Training Plans

Set work once, reuse it everywhere. Tasks map straight to KSBs so progress updates itself.

What’s inside

  • Bulk and template tasks
  • Task quizzes
  • Training plan record on the enrolment, with occupational hours and the off-the-job total
  • Activity bank
Live

Evidence & KSBs

Adaptive Diagnostics

Initial assessment that adapts to each learner, calibrated nightly from real responses.

What’s inside

  • Item bank and taxonomy
  • Invitations and live monitoring
  • Rasch / IRT calibration
  • Cohort diagnostic reporting
Live

Evidence & KSBs

Oaks Ascend

A verified career profile for graduates. Portable proof of skills that outlives the programme.

What’s inside

  • Verifiable Oaks Badge
  • QR and JSON credential output
  • Public career profile
  • Employer team radar
Live

Quality & IQA

Consistency Rule Engine

Encode your standard as rules at task, KSB, programme and gateway level. No more gateway surprises.

What’s inside

  • Task, KSB, programme and gateway scopes
  • KSBs that must be observed a set number of times
  • Gateway blocker checks
  • Rules enforced from the assessment screen
Live

Evidence & KSBs

Gateway Packs & EPA Results

What was declared at gateway is frozen in a pack. Resits and retakes stay attached to it, and a passing EPA result is written back to the learning aim.

What’s inside

  • Gateway declaration frozen as a record
  • Resits and retakes linked to the pack they follow
  • EPA result recorded for each attempt
  • Passing result written back to the learning aim
Live

Evidence & KSBs

Skills England Sync

Type a standard reference and Oaks pulls the course, its KSBs, its options and the minimum off-the-job hours straight from Skills England.

What’s inside

  • Standard lookup by ST reference and version
  • KSBs and occupation options mapped for you
  • Course KSBs compared with the published standard
  • Minimum off-the-job hours kept current
  • Monthly re-check of figures that have gone stale
Live

Quality & IQA

Learner RAG

Delivery risk across the whole cohort, before the review meeting rather than after it.

What’s inside

  • Six threshold metrics
  • OTJ variance against approved hours
  • Tripartite review currency
  • Programme phase overrides
Live

Quality & IQA

IQA Engine

Risk-led sampling that builds itself, with a sampling matrix that shows planned against actual for every assessor. Your IQA team works a queue, not a spreadsheet.

What’s inside

  • Sampling matrix by assessor, stage and method
  • Observations of assessor practice
  • Standardisation built from real sample findings
  • Per-course quotas, and no IQA samples their own work
  • Daily IQA digest email
Live

Quality & IQA

Ofsted Workspace

Your inspection evidence in one room, with a learner journey PDF ready for every deep dive and read-only logins for inspectors.

What’s inside

  • Evidence room grouped by toolkit evaluation area
  • Learner journey deep-dive PDF
  • Cohort KSB heatmap and tripartite review gaps
  • Time-limited inspector logins scoped to chosen learners
Live Add-on · hourly

Quality & IQA

Ofsted AI

An AI Ofsted inspection you can talk to. Alana, our AI inspector, asks the questions from the September 2026 FE and skills toolkit, weighs the evidence you show her and leaves a practice report card.

What’s inside

  • Spoken AI inspection with a talking inspector
  • Questions for each toolkit evaluation area
  • Upload evidence and get coaching on every answer
  • Practice report card for each type of provision
Live Add-on · hourly

Quality & IQA

OBTLA AI

Observation of teaching and learning, without the clipboard. Alana joins your Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet or Webex lesson as a muted guest and drafts the observation for your observer to check, grade and send to the tutor.

What’s inside

  • Joins Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and Webex lessons
  • Tells voices apart and finds the tutor
  • Draft observation in the Quality register for your observer to grade
  • Sent to the tutor to read and respond, never shown to learners
  • Audio deleted once the notes are written
Live

Quality & IQA

Quality Hub

Observations of teaching and learning, audits, safeguarding and CPD in one place, ready for inspection.

What’s inside

  • Observation of teaching and learning (OTL) and moderation
  • Internal audits and employer visits
  • Safeguarding and Prevent duty
  • Complaints and staff CPD
Live

Quality & IQA

Oaks Snapshot

A scheduled executive brief. RAG and gateway readiness land in leadership inboxes on your cadence.

What’s inside

  • Scheduled digests
  • RAG summary
  • Gateway readiness
  • Configurable profiles
Live

Delivery & Reviews

Live Progress Reviews

Tripartite reviews co-edited in real time and signed by learner, employer and tutor. A pending review can be marked gone to gateway.

What’s inside

  • Real-time collaborative editing
  • Three-way e-signatures
  • Gone to gateway stops reminders and does not schedule another review
  • Safeguarding and personal development modules due before the review
  • Custom templates and question bank
  • Automated reminders
Live

Delivery & Reviews

Off-the-Job Hours

The minimum comes from Skills England, learners log it, employers verify it, and the variance feeds straight into cohort risk.

What’s inside

  • Minimum hours checked against Skills England
  • Practical period and end dates suggested at enrolment
  • The training plan uses the off-the-job hours on the enrolment profile
  • Categorised logging and employer verification
  • Variance against plan feeds Learner RAG
Live

Delivery & Reviews

Action List

One list of what each tutor needs to do next, with a count in the menu. Work ticks itself off when it is done.

What’s inside

  • Submitted work waiting to be marked
  • Progress reviews coming due
  • Observations to read and respond to
  • Your own follow-ups, edited or deleted any time
Live

Delivery & Reviews

Employer Portal

Line managers see what needs them, sign off reviews and verify hours without chasing emails.

What’s inside

  • Action, task and OTJ queues
  • Learner overview
  • Review sign-off
  • Messages and CSV export
Live

Delivery & Reviews

Enrolment & Skillscan

From first form to signed agreement, with prior learning captured from every angle.

What’s inside

  • Multi-step enrolment with reminders
  • Employer e-signatures and agreements
  • Skillscan from learner and line manager
  • RPL assessment
  • Traffic lights for missing files, and every file in one ZIP
Live

Delivery & Reviews

Reports Library

Ready-made reports for every team, newest first. Deprivation from home postcodes, missing enrolment files and learners in care sit beside progress, off-the-job and EPA.

What’s inside

  • Deprivation deciles for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
  • Enrolment file traffic lights: form, PLR, skills scan and initial assessment
  • Learners in care with their tutor, programme and dates
  • Newest reports shown first
Live

Delivery & Reviews

Messaging & Policies

Conversations, announcements and policy sign-off inside the record, not scattered across inboxes.

What’s inside

  • Staff, learner and employer conversations
  • News announcements
  • Versioned policy acknowledgements
  • Help centre
Live

Integrity & Trust

AI Assessment Integrity

AI-content and plagiarism checks on every piece of evidence, right where tutors mark.

What’s inside

  • AI-generated content detection
  • Plagiarism checks
  • Per-evidence results on assessment logs
  • Text comparison
Live

Integrity & Trust

Secure by Design

Your own dedicated instance. Email and password sign-in asks for an authenticator app, with a passkey or an email code as backup, and every change is on the audit trail.

What’s inside

  • Dedicated single-tenant instance
  • Authenticator app, passkey and email-code sign-in
  • Microsoft sign-in when your Microsoft 365 connection is on
  • A learner data export for subject access requests
  • Role-based permissions
  • Activity log on every change
Live

Delivery & Reviews

Shaped to Your Organisation

Training provider, college, university, employer provider or charity: tell Oaks what you are and it speaks your language, from apprentices or students to terms or semesters.

What’s inside

  • Organisation type chosen in settings
  • Apprentice, student or learner wording
  • Funding year, academic terms or semesters
  • Funded provision switched on only when you deliver it
Live

Integrity & Trust

Welfare, Prevent & British Values

Welfare checks, Prevent discussions and British Values coverage logged on the learner record. A safeguarding flag alerts every DSL straight away.

What’s inside

  • Welfare checks and wellbeing concerns
  • Prevent and British Values themes
  • Instant alerts to every DSL
  • Under-18 learner register

Coming soon

Still growing. Every season.

Oaks is built alongside the providers who use it. These are the next branches on the tree, shaped by what inspectors, funders and tutors ask of us. Every customer gets them as they land.

  • Coming soon

    Funding

    ILR Export & Evidence Packs

    Funding-grade exports and audit evidence packs for providers who want one system.

    • ILR export
    • Audit evidence packs
    • Funding rule checks
  • Coming soon

    Funding

    Self-healing ILR

    An AI preflight that finds ILR errors before the ESFA does, and fixes the routine ones for you.

    • Real-time field validation
    • Suggested and one-click fixes
    • ESFA Hub error sync
    • Schema drift guard
  • Coming soon

    Funding

    Revenue Rescue Engine

    Spots funding clawback risk while there is still time to act, not at audit.

    • Clawback risk score per learner
    • Practical period safety net
    • Planned end date lock
    • Prioritised rescue list
  • Coming soon

    Quality & IQA

    Predictive Flight Risk

    Machine learning that flags learners likely to withdraw weeks before the warning signs are obvious.

    • Dropout likelihood per learner
    • Coasting cohort early warning
    • Explainable risk drivers
    • Micro-rescue plans
  • Coming soon

    Delivery & Reviews

    What To Do Today

    The Action List, ranked by risk, so every tutor starts the day knowing who to see first.

    • Daily prioritised order
    • Caseload risk weighting
    • Overdue and at-risk nudges
    • Suggested next step for each learner
  • Coming soon

    Evidence & KSBs

    Single-screen Grading

    Evidence, criteria, integrity results and feedback side by side. Mark a submission without changing tab.

    • Evidence beside the KSBs
    • Inline AI and plagiarism results
    • Feedback templates
    • Keyboard-first marking
  • Coming soon

    Quality & IQA

    Learner Journey Time Machine

    Replay any learner's journey, week by week, so inspectors see the impact rather than a spreadsheet.

    • Week-by-week playback
    • Progress, reviews and OTJ in one timeline
    • Ofsted-ready narrative
    • Shareable read-only link
  • Coming soon

    Integrity & Trust

    Safeguarding Panic Button

    One tap for a learner to reach your safeguarding team, with instant triage for the DSL.

    • Always-visible help button
    • Instant DSL alerts
    • Triage and escalation log
    • Links with Oaks DNA
  • Coming soon

    Evidence & KSBs

    Direct EPAO Portfolio Hand-off

    Send a gateway-ready portfolio straight to the end-point assessment organisation, no exports.

    • Gateway readiness hard-stop
    • Portfolio packaged per EPAO
    • Submission status tracking
    • English and maths gateway monitor
  • Coming soon

    Delivery & Reviews

    Passive OTJ Logger

    Off-the-job hours suggested from the learner's calendar, so logging takes seconds, not Friday afternoons.

    • Calendar-based suggestions
    • Substantive vs administrative screening
    • Dynamic OTJ target balancer
    • Employer confirmation
  • Coming soon

    Evidence & KSBs

    AI Evidence Assistant

    Learners capture evidence from Teams or their phone and it lands in Oaks, mapped to the right KSBs.

    • Capture from Teams and mobile
    • Automatic KSB suggestions
    • Tutor approval step
    • Voice and photo evidence

Want a say in what grows next? Book a demo and tell us what your team needs.

The learner journey

From acorn to canopy

One record follows each apprentice from enrolment to gateway. Scroll through the journey and watch it grow.

  1. 01 · Enrol

    Planted properly

    Multi-step enrolment, employer e-signatures and the apprenticeship agreement, all done before day one.

    • Enrolment
    • E-signatures

  2. 02 · Diagnose

    Know the soil

    Skillscan gathers the learner and line manager view, RPL records prior learning, and adaptive diagnostics set a fair starting line.

    • Skillscan
    • RPL
    • Diagnostics

  3. 03 · Deliver

    Steady growth

    Tasks and the training plan on the enrolment map straight to KSBs, with occupational hours and the off-the-job total. Learners log those hours and employers verify them.

    • Tasks
    • Training plans
    • OTJ

  4. 04 · Evidence

    Rings in the trunk

    The Knowledge Grove shows every KSB with its evidence beside it, and AI integrity checks run where tutors mark.

    • Knowledge Grove
    • AI integrity

  5. 05 · Review & assure

    Tended, not left to chance

    Live tripartite reviews, signed by learner, employer and tutor. A pending review can be marked gone to gateway, and the safeguarding and personal development modules due before it sit on the same page.

    • Reviews
    • IQA Engine
    • Rule engine

  6. 06 · Gateway & beyond

    A canopy of its own

    Leadership sees gateway readiness in the RAG and Snapshot. Graduates carry verified proof of their skills with Oaks Ascend.

    • Learner RAG
    • Snapshot
    • Ascend

Nexus · Developer support

Talk to the people who build it.

With most e-portfolio platforms, a problem means a ticket in a queue and a long wait before a developer ever hears about it. We have reinvented support around Nexus: your team reaches the Oaks developers directly, and can connect to live support when it matters most.

Because we build and run Oaks ourselves, fixes and adjustments don’t take an age.*

See Nexus in a demo

Available alongside any Oaks licence.

The usual way Your ticket passes through layers of first-line support before anyone who can fix it sees it.

The Oaks way Raise an issue from inside Oaks and it goes straight to the developers who build the platform.

The usual way You explain the same problem again and again, and wait days for an email reply.

The Oaks way Connect to live support when something is urgent and talk it through there and then.

The usual way Fixes and changes wait months for the next big release, if they make the roadmap at all.

The Oaks way Fixes and adjustments reach your site quickly, without waiting on a distant release cycle.*

*Within reason. Fixes and small adjustments move quickly; bigger changes are planned with you, and every change is tested before it reaches your site.

Pricing & seats

Licensed to fit your cohort

Choose the modules you need, then size your instance with three seat pools. Every licence runs on its own dedicated Oaks instance, and you only pay for what you use.

For quality leads and COOs

Oaks Quality

The quality engine: encode your standard and see cohort risk early.

  • Consistency rule engine
  • Learner RAG
  • Live progress reviews
  • Knowledge Grove and KSB gap views
  • IQA Engine
  • AI assessment integrity (usage-based)
Request a quote
Most chosen

For heads of delivery

Oaks Delivery

Everything in Quality, plus the portals your learners and employers use every day.

  • Everything in Oaks Quality
  • Learner and employer portals
  • Off-the-job hours with employer verification
  • Skillscan and RPL
  • Enrolment with e-signatures
  • Adaptive diagnostics
Request a quote

For large and multi-site providers

Oaks Enterprise

Delivery at scale, with dedicated support and integration help.

  • Everything in Oaks Delivery
  • Seat pools sized for multi-site teams
  • Dedicated instance and custom domain
  • Onboarding and data migration support
  • Premium support
Request a quote

For finance and compliance

Oaks Funding

Funding-grade exports for providers who want one system. On the roadmap.

  • ILR export
  • Audit evidence packs
  • Funding rule checks

On the roadmap

Staged Intake Rollout

Locked into OneFile or Bud?

You don’t need to cancel early or double-pay. Put your next incoming cohort on Oaks. Existing cohorts finish where they are, while your modern provision scales on your own dedicated instance.

See how staged migration works →
Single-Cohort Sandbox Pilot

Test 1 Standard for 1 Academic Term

Launch a pilot cohort of 25–50 learners on your own dedicated Oaks instance. If your assessors and employer mentors don’t prefer Oaks, walk away with a 100% full data export.

Enquire about a pilot cohort →

Add-on · Oaks DNA

Safeguarding for every learner device

Pair any tier with Oaks DNA: on-device watch words, properly recorded concerns and one-click help for learners.

Learn more Ask about Oaks DNA

Seat estimator

How big is your grove?

Move the slider to your active apprentice count. We suggest staff seats from a typical caseload, and you can adjust anything.

25 2,500+

Your instance licence

Learner seats
Staff seats
Management seats

Includes about % headroom so new starters never stall. Band: .

Pricing

Contact us for pricing

Send us this estimate and we will give you a clear quote for your seats and modules in your demo.

Oaks DNA · Safeguarding

Care, written into the DNA.

Oaks DNA is our companion safeguarding platform for the Windows devices your learners use. It spots risk early, gives learners a direct line to help and keeps every concern on record, without ever recording what they type.

  • Keystrokes are never stored
  • Context capped at 80 characters
  • Warning views and decisions audited
  • Automatic retention pruning
  • DPIA checklist included
Add Oaks DNA to my demo

Available alongside any Oaks licence or on its own.

Watch words, matched on the device

Your safeguarding phrase list is checked on the learner’s device. A match raises a warning carrying only the phrase, a short snippet of context and the app it came from.

Warnings triaged by severity

Safeguarding officers work a queue ranked from low to critical, with an optional screenshot captured on high and critical warnings.

Concerns, properly recorded

Escalate a warning into a concern with notes, an owner and a printable PDF report for your safeguarding records.

Help, one click away

Learners open the acorn in their system tray for emergency numbers, live chat with your safeguarding team, or to raise a concern themselves.

Blocked websites

Keep your own blocklist, sync trusted external lists overnight and push changes out to every device.

Accountable by design

Roles for admins, safeguarding officers and viewers, two-factor sign-in, an audit trail of warning views and decisions, and automatic retention pruning.

FAQ

Questions providers ask

What is Oaks?

Oaks is apprenticeship management software and an e-portfolio in one. It covers KSB evidence, tasks and workbooks, tripartite progress reviews, off-the-job hours, IQA sampling, gateway readiness, the ILR export and Ofsted readiness, with AI-content and plagiarism checks on every piece of evidence.

Who is Oaks for?

Independent training providers, further education colleges, universities delivering degree apprenticeships, and employer providers in England. Oaks adapts its language to your organisation, from apprentices to students and terms to semesters.

Is Oaks an alternative to Onefile, Bud or Aptem?

Yes. Many providers compare us with Onefile, Bud and Aptem, as well as Smart Assessor, Ecordia, Rubitek, Quals Direct, Journey, TIQPlus, PebblePad and Maytas. Our comparison pages show, from each vendor’s own published information, where Oaks is different and where they lead today.

How do off-the-job hours work in Oaks?

The minimum hours come from Skills England for each standard. Learners log their hours, employers verify them, and any shortfall feeds straight into cohort risk so tutors can act early.

How much does Oaks cost?

Oaks is licensed per dedicated instance: seats for learners, staff and management, plus the modules you choose. AI add-ons such as OBTLA AI and Ofsted AI are billed by the hour you use. Use the seat estimator to size your licence, and we will give you a clear quote in your demo.

What happens in a demo?

A live walkthrough built around your own standards, cohort and gateway challenges, with an honest view of what is live and what is on the roadmap, and a clear licence recommendation for your seats.

Direct Access & Walkthrough

See your own instance grow.

A tailored walkthrough or direct inquiry with our engineering and implementation leads. Honest about what is live, transparent on pricing, and responsive within 24 hours.

  • Dedicated instance for every provider — zero shared database risk
  • Thirty minutes on your own standards, KSBs and tripartite workflows
  • Tender, PQQ and G-Cloud procurement specifications answered directly

Prefer to read first? View the brochure Download the PDF

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Book your free demo Contact our team

A live walkthrough on your own standards, with no obligation. We reply within 24 hours. Have questions about migration, tender specifications or custom needs? We reply within 24 hours.

From your estimate:

We only use these details to arrange your demo or respond to your enquiry. Direct developer support