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# 25 September 2026

Nothing this week needs anything from you. The one API change is a new optional field, and
an integration that ignores it behaves exactly as it does today.

## Institution API

### Specialisations on an application

An application can now record the majors, minors, honours streams and research areas an
applicant is taking alongside their program.

Send them on submit as handbook codes:

```json
{
  "applicant": { "givenName1": "Tam", "familyName": "Nguyen", "dob": "2004-03-11",
                 "emailAddress": "t.nguyen@student.example.edu.au" },
  "programCode": "3409",
  "year": 2026,
  "stream": "DOMESTIC_FP",
  "specialisations": ["SOCAE1", "THSTC1"]
}
```

Codes alone, not code-and-year pairs. They are read in the application's own `year`, the same
handbook year `programCode` is read in, so this is the shape you already send. A code the
catalogue does not hold for that year is a `400` naming it.

`GET /institution/applications/{id}` returns them with the catalogue's own words:

```json
"specialisations": [
  { "code": "SOCAE1", "year": 2026, "name": "Sociology", "type": "Major" },
  { "code": "THSTC1", "year": 2026, "name": "Theatre and Performance Studies", "type": "Minor" }
]
```

`name` and `type` come from the catalogue and are `null` if we no longer hold that
specialisation. `code` and `year` are what the application recorded, so a withdrawn
specialisation still reads as a code rather than as nothing.

Correct them with a merge patch. `specialisations` replaces the whole set the way `sources`
does, so send them all to change one:

```json
{ "specialisations": ["SOCAE1"] }
```

An empty array or `null` removes them. Unlike `programCode`, `year` and `stream`, this is
**not** refused after an assessment has run: nothing is assessed against a specialisation, so
correcting one leaves the credit already granted true. Same reasoning as `intakeCode`.

The field is optional everywhere and an application without any is completely normal — most
programs offer none. Two is the usual maximum and the applicant portal holds to it, but this
endpoint does not: what you send is what happened.

## Management Portal

### Cognate rules

The RPL checksheets are now data rather than a set of spreadsheets. **RPL → Cognate Rules**
holds a ruleset per program area, each a set of rules an officer can read and edit: the
qualifications a rule tests, the AQF level, discipline, completion and recency it asks for,
and the outcome it grants.

The lists a rule tests against are managed in the same place. A list carries three flags —
whether it is cognate, whether it can decide a match on its own, and whether it always needs
an officer's attention — and anything marked not cognate is automatically held for a person
rather than deciding alone.

> **Warning**
>
> This release is **authoring only**. Nothing evaluates a cognate rule yet, and no
> application is matched or decided against one. What the rules affect today is what an
> officer reads while assessing by hand.

The 26 checksheets are loaded: 190 rules over 259 conditions, and 59 lists. Several of them
carry questions we would like answered, and those are the ones an officer will find flagged
for attention.

### Editing a program's structure

A program's or a specialisation's curriculum can now be built and corrected in the portal,
on the **Curriculum** tab, rather than only arriving with the handbook.

Two tabs, because the two jobs are different:

* **Root structure** is the shape. Add a structure under the program, nest one inside
  another, and attach a specialisation the program offers.
* **Structures** is the flat list of every structure, and where courses go into one.

A structure carries its title, its note and its rule, and a specialisation attached to a
program shows as a pointer rather than repeating its whole subtree — its own page is where
that lives.

### Specialisations in the catalogue

**Catalogue → Specialisations** lists the majors, minors, honours streams and research areas
alongside programs and courses, searchable by code, name, type and year, with a detail page
for each. Most arrive with the handbook; one can be added here when it has not.

The Programs list and detail page now read the same way, and a program's code and year are
locked once it exists, since they are its identity rather than fields.

### Specialisations on an application

Officers record what an applicant is taking on both screens that create or correct an
application — **New application**, and the application's own **Overview**. The picker offers
only what the chosen program's curriculum lists, grouped into its majors and minors, and
stops at two.

### RPL on a program

A program's **RPL** tab now links to the credit agreements and cognate rulesets that apply to
it. The credit rules that were there are unchanged and still reachable; we are settling what
belongs on that tab before putting them back.

## Applicant Portal

### Choosing specialisations

An applicant picks their majors and minors on the same screen as their program and intake,
because a specialisation is part of what they are applying for rather than another question
in the form. Up to two, and the picker only appears for a program that offers any.

It changes what comes next. Nominating courses for credit used to offer everything the
program references, which for a large program is several hundred courses and mostly the wrong
ones. Narrowed to what the applicant is actually taking, one program goes from 696 courses to
59\.

### Declarations

A form can now ask an applicant to agree to things before submitting. **Application Portal →
Forms** takes a Declarations step, and you write as many separate tick boxes on it as you
need, marking the ones that must be ticked. An applicant cannot move past the step until the
required ones are.

### Smaller things

* A course can only be nominated once. The picker leaves out what is already on the list, and
  a code typed by hand is refused if it is already there.
* The form is wider and reads at a larger size, and its fields are spaced further apart. It is
  filled in once, often on a phone, often by somebody who has not seen it before.

> What changed in this week's release