Bulletin for August 2026

Academic year (AY) 2026/27

We need you to complete the following administrative tasks in preparation for the new academic year.

New EMA Learning Agreement

Make sure new and returning students sign a new EMA Learning Agreement for each academic year. The EMA scheme start date for AY 2026/27 will be 7 September.

Add Learning Agreement details to the portal

Input signed Learning Agreements into the LC Portal. Please do this within 10 working days of an approved application, or 7 September, whichever is later. You can confirm their attendance before 7 September if your students return to study earlier and have a signed Learning Agreement.

Enter holidays

If you've not already done so, please remember to enter your holidays for AY 2026/27. Over 76% of Learning Centres have done this already. There's more information about how to enter your holidays on the Learning Centre Services website.

Remove students

Remove any students who are no longer studying with you from the AY 2026/27 portal as soon as possible.

Staff changes at your Learning Centre

If there's been a change in staff administering EMA at your Learning Centre please contact me. We can arrange a training session either online or face to face.

Please also go to the maintenance section of the portal and expire any users that no longer need access to the portal.

Student applications

New students

New students should apply by filling out a paper application form which we provided to you in April 2026. EMA paper application forms are also available to download on the NI direct website.

To be eligible for backdated EMA payments to the start of the academic year, students must apply before 30 September. Applications received after this date will still be eligible for backdated pay. However, this will only be from the qualifying week that we received their application form.

Please encourage students to apply as early as possible

Returning students

Returning students do not need to submit an application. Instead, their signed AY 2026/27 Learning Agreement acts as their application to reapply for support for a further year. Student Finance NI wrote to returning students during the spring to let them know the next steps to follow for AY 2026/27.

Learning Centre Services website

Remember that there's guidance and promotional materials on the Learning Centre Services website. There's also an example of a fair and realistic Learning Agreement available. This can be a guide should yours need updating. You can access AY 2026/27 Learning Agreements and payment information guides on the LC Portal in the downloads section.

Attendance confirmations

You should confirm the previous week's attendances every week before 5pm on a Wednesday. This will allow us to make sure we pay students on time. We'll track this service standard closely. There's further guidance on how to confirm attendance on the LC Services website.

EMA support desk

Our support desk team is available to answer any day to day operational questions about individual students, application processing, payments and system issues.

You can contact the support desk on 0300 200 7089 option 5 or email emainfo@slc.co.uk.