Bonus quick guide

This quick guide covers all the major aspects of the EMA bonus scheme. It will also explain how a few tweaks to your processes can help you ensure all bonuses are confirmed by the end of January or June.

Students must sign Part 2 of their EMA Learning Agreement to be eligible for the January and June bonus payments (£100 each).

We must receive applications by 2 December for students to be eligible for a bonus.

Signing the EMA Learning Agreement

To begin receiving weekly EMA payments, students must first sign their EMA Learning Agreement Part 1. To be eligible for their 2 bonus payments, they must sign their EMA Learning Agreement Part 2.

Some Learning Centres arrange for students to sign the 2 parts at different times, but they can sign both at the same time. This will avoid you and the student having to arrange a second signing.

To be eligible for the bonus, students must first agree to the bonus objectives in Part 2 of their EMA Learning Agreement. Bonus objectives should be individual to each student. They should be achievable either by the end of January or the end of June.

Part 1 of the EMA Learning Agreement covers weekly allowance and is attendance based. Part 2 of the EMA Learning Agreement covers bonus payments and should be performance based. The bonus objectives in Part 2 should therefore be different from the requirements set by Part 1.

Some criteria that you could consider for students’ objectives are:

• hand in all coursework on time
  
  
• receive no formal behaviour penalties, for example detention or removal from classroom
  
  
• attend all exams

It is best practice to make the bonus criteria clear and evidence based. For example, coursework due dates and attendance at exams are good objectives.

You should not include a general 'good behaviour' objective for a bonus. Good behaviour is subjective and may make the decision to confirm or disallow bonus more difficult than a provable objective.

You should also avoid objectives that require a student to reach a certain grade in an exam or for a piece of work.

January bonus requirements

An important aspect of the bonus scheme is that students must sign their EMA Learning Agreement Part 2 before 2 December. They must meet this date to be eligible for the January bonus.

Students can sign the EMA Learning Agreement Part 2 earlier, for example along with Part 1. The 2 December deadline has been set to ensure students have enough time to work towards and achieve their January bonus objectives.

When you update the EMA Learning Agreement information on the Learning Centre Portal, it will ask you to enter the Part 2 confirmation date.

If a student’s application has not been approved, but 2 December is approaching, you can arrange for them to sign their EMA Learning Agreement Part 1 and 2. They can sign these before we’ve approved their application. Once we’ve approved the application, you can enter the date the EMA Learning Agreement Part 2 was signed on the Learning Centre Portal. This will allow the student to be eligible for their January bonus.

Bonus confirmation in January and June

When you're setting the Part 2 objectives, you should ensure that students can achieve them by the end of January and June. This will allow you to confirm the bonuses due to be paid at the end of those periods.

You should generally not allow students extra time to achieve their objectives. If a student does not achieve the January objectives by the end of January, you should select Bonus Disallowed on the Learning Centre Portal. However, if the student has a valid reason, you can move the objective date beyond the end of January or June. For example, this might include students who have been absent due to sickness for a prolonged period.

If a student has met their bonus objectives, you can confirm this on the Learning Centre Portal straight away. You do not need to get a signature or arrange a meeting with the student. The student will receive a text message to confirm they’ve met their objectives. We'll send out these text messages at set times in January and June before the students receive their bonus payments.

However, you must arrange meetings with and get signatures from students who did not meet their objectives. This is so these students know what they need to improve.

Confirming bonuses on the Learning Centre Portal

Once you’ve determined whether a student has achieved their objectives, you must confirm their bonus on the Learning Centre Portal.

1. Go to Worklists and open the Bonus Worklist tab. Or select the relevant Unconfirmed Bonus link from the homepage.
   
   
2. Select the relevant year from the Academic Year dropdown.
   
   
3. Select the January or June date from the Week Ending Date dropdown.
   
   
4. Select Search to bring up a list of all students eligible for that month’s bonus.
   
   
5. Select Bonus Confirmed or Bonus Disallowed for each student on the list.
   
   
6. Once you’ve made a selection for each student, select Save.

Students whose bonus you’ve confirmed will then receive a text message to say they’ll receive their bonus on the next payment date.

If you make a mistake and select Bonus Disallowed, you can change this to Bonus Confirmed. The student will then receive their bonus at the next payment date. This works much like an attendance confirmation reversal.

If you’ve selected Bonus Approved by mistake, you should change this to Bonus Disallowed. However, this will put the student in overpayment. You should therefore always make sure that a student should receive their bonus before you record this on the Learning Centre Portal.

You do not need to allocate bonus confirmations for all students at the same time, but you should allocate all of them by the end of January or June.

Summary

To be eligible for the January bonus, students must sign their EMA Learning Agreement Part 2 before 2 December.

You should:

• update the Learning Centre Portal with the date the student signed their EMA Learning Agreement Part 2
  
  
• ensure bonus objectives are evidence based to make it easier to confirm whether an objective has been met
  
  
• confirm bonuses before the end of January and June