Overview

Every change in this release comes back to the same goal: a clear picture of each learner's support journey, an obvious next step at every stage, and an evidence trail that builds itself as your team works.

The ten changes at a glance

The journey

The proactive pathway: five stages, one learner at a time

It follows the graduated approach: assess, plan, do, review (APDR), the cycle set out in the SEND Code of Practice. Working this way helps you evidence inclusion and impact for inspection, because every stage a learner moves through, and every decision made along the way, is recorded as you work.

Learners start here until they complete the NeuroMap cognitive assessment: a clinically validated assessment of around thirty minutes covering the nine key cognitive domains. Results produce a classification, Consider Needs Assessment or Monitor and Review, which is a signal for the tutor's professional judgement, never a verdict. Known barriers capture what the learner chooses to disclose, and disclosure often grows as trust does.

If a barrier becomes known before the assessment is finished, the learner moves forward straight away, with a banner noting the assessment is still outstanding. A disclosed barrier never has to wait for a score. Learners whose results show no identified need, with no known barriers, move to Self-serve.

The tutor's solo preparation, in the Support plan tab: one guided flow from opening the report to one recorded decision. Seven steps, two phases, one gate in the middle:

1. Step 1: About the learner. A plain-language recap of the person before any results: name, course, place of study and programme level, so a tutor who last saw the learner weeks ago picks them up in seconds.
2. Step 2: Cognitive results. The nine domains, presented strengths-first, with guidance on reading the scores. Eye icons let the tutor curate exactly which sections the learner will see in the meeting.
3. Step 3: Known barriers. What the learner has chosen to disclose, grouped by category, with documents attachable. Optional by design, and updatable at any time.
4. Step 4: The needs assessment decision. One clear question: are you taking this learner forward to a needs assessment? Two equal choices, with an optional prompt for the evidence or context behind the decision, either way. A no moves the learner to Self-serve, with a route back at any time.
5. Step 5: Reasonable adjustments. Unlocked by a yes: draft adjustments matched to the learner's cognitive profile and written for their actual course, with the strongest matches pre-assigned and everything editable. Each one shows its intent, a worked implementation example, and the impact.
6. Step 6: Goals and impact. Two prompts that give the plan its purpose: what success requires, and what happens without support. Drafted now, refined with the learner in the meeting.
7. Step 7: Next steps. The handover to the needs assessment meeting, with everything drafted, curated and decided carried forward.

The pivotal conversation of the whole pathway: a guided meeting walked with the learner, from their strengths to a plan they have shaped. The flow moves through introduction, about you, cognitive results, known barriers, the support plan and support status, with progress ticked off along the top and every word addressed to the learner.

The middle is co-creation: the same adjustments the tutor prepared, now reviewed and updated together, with the full library one tab away. The draft is a starting point by design, never a finished document.

The meeting ends with the question that gives the plan its legitimacy: would you like support during your course? It is completely the learner's choice.

• Yes: the agreement is recorded, including the review cadence and sharing consent, and support becomes active.
• Not right now: a valid, recorded choice. The learner keeps their account and modules, and the door back stays open. The question is asked fresh every session, because consent is a conversation, not a checkbox.
• The meeting happened outside Cognassist? The tutor records the outcome with one action and the learner moves on through the pathway.

Tutors deliver the agreed adjustments inside their normal teaching, then once a month select the adjustment they supported, confirm delivery and describe the impact. The platform holds the thread from every record back to the assessed need, and the Coverage Checker coaches the quality of the evidence as they write. Light by design: judgement, not admin.

This stage keeps the board quiet on purpose: learners who are up to date do not show a card. A card appears only when no support record has been added for 30 days, so the board stays focused on actions. A summary count always shows the full supported population. When a learner's review date falls within the next seven days, they move to Progress Review automatically.

The whole-plan review, at least every three months, now with its own Progress review tab on the learner profile:

• A milestones timeline read from the plan's change journal, showing every change since the plan was last agreed.
• A guided review flow through barriers, adjustments, goals and the learner's own reflections, ending in a shared decision to continue or end support.
• The review history with document downloads and due-date flags, so everything stays on track and nothing is lost.

Ending support with the evidence it worked is a positive outcome: managed progress, not permanent caseload. The learner keeps their account, their modules and a route back in.

Off the board, not off the platform. Self-serve is the state for learners not on proactive support, whether no need was identified, they declined, or they stepped off after support worked. They keep their account and their monthly self-serve learning modules.

Coming back is always a deliberate, manual step by your team, never automatic: back to Evaluate Learning Barriers for a fresh look, or support restarted directly. Every route into Self-serve records its reason, so every exit is explainable and your reporting can always tell the different groups apart.

Your workspace

A dashboard, learner list and profile built around the journey

Dashboard stage cards

New dashboard cards break your learners down by stage: the five journey stages plus Self-serve, one card each, with needs attention and overdue counts surfaced on every card. One click jumps straight into the learners for that stage. Tutors open the app already knowing what needs their attention: a prioritised to-do list rather than a static summary.

The learner list, your way

• A Stage column shows where each learner is, in the same colours as the dashboard, with proactively supported learners flagged inline next to their name.
• Filters narrow the list by stage and by time in current stage (on track, needs attention, overdue), on their own or combined with other filters. Everyone overdue in a stage becomes a worklist in seconds.
• Column customisation: every tutor picks exactly which columns their list shows, drags them into their own order, applies once, and it is remembered every time they come back. Personal to each tutor, so the view fits how they work rather than the other way round.

The activity timeline: every learner's story in one place

Each learner's Summary tab now carries an activity timeline: a chronological record of every activity on their record to date. Stage movements, the decisions made along the way and the reasoning recorded with them, plan changes, support records and reviews all appear in one ordered view.

Where the pathway board tells you where a learner is now and what comes next, the timeline tells you everything that has happened, when, and why. A secondary tutor picking up a learner mid-year, a new team member, or a manager preparing for an audit can read the whole story in one place, without piecing it together from different tabs. It is an audit trail that builds itself as your team works.

Clearer names in the navigation

Three renames make the navigation say what each thing does: the Plan tab is now the Toolkit (reasonable adjustments and learning modules together, with drag-and-drop assignment), the Review tab is now the Support plan tab, and Present becomes Conduct needs assessment. These are renames only: nothing moves, nothing changes behaviour, and your old links and bookmarks keep working.

Signatures

Signed on the plan, signed on the evidence

E-signatures close the loop at both ends of the journey:

• On the support plan: the agreed plan carries tutor and learner signatures alongside the recorded agreement.
• On the evidence: the tutor types or uploads their signature, the learner signs on their own device by email link or QR code, and signatures render on the PDF export.
• Your admins decide: the feature toggles on or off per account, separately for the support plan and for evidence.

Editing a signed record resets its signatures, and the product warns before that happens, so signed records stay trustworthy.

Your go-live

Where your existing learners will appear

When the pathway switches on, your learners will not start from a blank board. Each learner is placed once into the stage that matches the journey they are already on, using the data already in your platform: assessment status and results, known barriers, adjustment activity, and the proactively supporting toggle. From then on, learners move by the normal stage rules.

Status flags are set from your existing dates, so a learner whose assessment has waited three months shows as overdue from day one. That first picture is honest by design: it shows your team exactly where to focus first.

Worth knowing:

• The migration is deliberately conservative. Nobody is marked as supported who was not already, and anything ambiguous lands where the next action is still due.
• Where a report was reviewed some time ago and no action followed, the learner is placed in Self-serve rather than reappearing as a task. They stay visible and can be re-engaged at any time.
• Learners past their course end date keep their history but never appear as cards, so the board stays relevant.
• Nobody is placed directly into Progress Review: learners arrive there from Actively Supporting when their agreed review date approaches.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

About the pathway

About your data and day one

About the day-to-day