Bulletin for February 2024

It’s almost time to register – the annual forums for EMA are returning for 2024!

Registration will be open very soon for our service review forums.

This is an opportunity for Learning Centres to participate in small groups to discuss the administrative requirements of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA). This year, we'll run a mixed schedule of virtual and face-to-face events.

Face-to-face events are all morning sessions from 9.30am to 12pm. We'll provide tea and coffee and a light lunch.

23 April – Maghera - 53 Main St, Maghera BT46 5AA
24 April - Omagh -Silverbirch hotel, 5 Gortin Rd, Tyrone, Omagh BT79 7DH
25 April - Belfast -The Gasworks, 3 Cromac Pl, Belfast BT7 2JB

Virtual events will be held on Microsoft Teams:

16 April - morning session from 9.30am to 11.30am
17 April - morning session from 9.30am to 11.30am
18 April - morning session from 9.30am to 11.30am
19 April - morning session from 9.30am to 11.30am

EMA materials for academic year 2024/25

This year, we'll start to distribute the Little Book of EMA in late February so these should be with you by early March. We're planning to keep paper copies to a minimum, so will only deliver these to larger colleges to help with open days and other events.

All schools and colleges already have access to the 2024/25 materials in PDF. Please download these and share with students, parents and guardians by email or any other method you find best.

EMA materials for academic year 2024/25

Reminders

We appreciate the issues caused by the LC Portal being unavailable last week and we recognise the impact to students of the ongoing cost of living increase. It's as important as ever that students get any money they're due on time every 2 weeks so please do check that your submissions on the Learning Centre Portal are now 100% up to date.

Please check that your submissions on the Learning Centre Portal are 100% up to date.

Unconfirmed weeks

Please check for any unconfirmed attendances. To do this, go to Worklists and select Attendance worklist. If the Unconfirmed weeks indicator appears, select it to see further details.

Attendance

You must submit a weekly confirmation for every student, whether they're in attendance or not. The deadline for submitting confirmations for each week is 5pm the following Wednesday.

Holidays

Please check for the upcoming Easter break that you've marked the following weeks as holidays on the Learning Centre Portal:

• all weeks when your Learning Centre is closed
• all weeks your Learning Centre is only open for one day

This will automatically mark all students as on holiday, ensuring the portal is up to date.

Bonus confirmations

If you have not already done so, please submit any outstanding bonus confirmations as soon as you can.

Students must have signed their EMA Learning Agreement Part 2 before 2 December 2023 to be eligible for a January bonus payment.

Please remember to also make a submission for any students who have not achieved their targets.

Maintain Profile tab of the Learning Centre Portal

We're using the contact details on the Maintain Profile tab of the Learning Centre Portal to send you important service information and regular updates. Please check that your information is up to date there so you do not miss any important emails from us.

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 or email emainfo@slc.co.uk.I am your primary adviser and your principal point of contact for service management, future developments and best practice and will be happy to answer any questions you may have about the topics highlighted in this bulletin.