Bulletin for January 2025

Service Review Forums 2024/25

We're planning our 2024/25 Service Review Forums. The forums have always been well attended, and we look forward to welcoming you along to one of the events.

We plan to host face to face and virtual forums. We'll send out a 'save the date' email shortly, so please look out for it.

Bonus allocation

If a student has met their objectives, you should allocate their bonus on the 'Confirm Bonus' tab.

You should also make submissions for students who have not achieved their objectives.

When you've submitted bonus confirmations, students will receive a text message confirming their bonus. This will happen just before we send the payments out.

We started paying January bonuses on 6 January. You should confirm all bonuses by 31 January.

Authorised absence - accommodation appointments and viewings

We've added a new acceptable reason for authorising absences to our EMA guidance.

It's acceptable to record an absence if your students cannot make the following appointments outside of school or college hours at the request of a local authority or local council:

• attending accommodation or housing viewing appointments
• signing accommodation or housing agreements and contracts

For full guidance on authorised absences, please visit the LC Services website.

Students can still apply for AY 2024/25

It’s not too late for students to apply for EMA for AY 2024/25.

Please encourage any students you may feel are eligible to apply as soon as possible.

Students can download the application form and guidance from nidirect.

'Coming soon' materials

The 'coming soon' materials for academic year 2025/26 will be available on the LC Services website in February.

Please consider how best to share these documents in areas your students will see. This could include information websites, social media or information boards. These materials are an important part of the promotion of EMA. They'll help students to make informed choices about their future education.

We thank you as always for your continued support in making this information accessible to students.

Attendance confirmations

It's as important as ever that students receive their EMA payments on time, every 2 weeks.

To make sure this happens, please confirm attendance on the Learning Centre portal every week.

You should submit your confirmations before 5pm on a Wednesday for the previous week. You can find the payment information guide on the Learning Centre Portal.

Learning Centre Portal housekeeping and security

You should expire the accounts of any Learning Centre Portal users who no longer need access to the system.

For example, they may have left their job or changed role. This helps to maintain the security of the portal and the student data. You can find more information on the Learning Centre Portal user guide on how to do this.

You should also be aware that only email addresses on the 'profiles' page within the portal will receive our bulletins.

Please review and update your contacts list to make sure all necessary staff are there.

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.