Bulletin for June 2025

Bonus allocation

If you've not already done so, please allocate June bonuses on the Learning Centre Portal

You should also make submissions for students who've not achieved their objectives. Please confirm all bonuses by Friday 27 June.

Summer holidays

Many of you will be on summer break soon. We're opening the Learning Centre Portal early for entries for the week ending 27 June. You can submit attendances from Monday 23 June. This means the allocations will be in place before you break for the holidays.

Please also check your academic year 2024/25 holiday entries for July and August. You need to tick all the weeks you're off during the summer as holiday weeks. This will automatically mark all students as on holiday, meaning the portal is up to date. Please also make sure that you check the ‘unconfirmed weeks’ section of the portal. This will administer any outstanding student payments.

Holiday information for academic year 2025/26

If you've not already done so, please enter holiday information for academic year 2025/26 on the Learning Centre Portal.

You need to enter all weeks that your learning centre is on holiday for the whole academic year before it starts in September. This includes summer holidays for 2026.

You'll not be able to confirm attendance for academic year 2025/26 until you've entered your holidays. This could affect the scheduling of payments to students.

Service review forums

Thank you to those who were able to attend our online and face to face service review forums. You can view the presentation slides and Q&A from the forums on the LC Services website.

EMA applications for academic year 2025/26

Please encourage any new EMA students to:

complete and sign their application forms for academic year 2025/26

return signed application forms with any supporting documents to SFNI as soon as they can

Students can also download the application form and guidance from nidirect.

Sample checks

We'll no longer be carrying out the usual household income sample check for EMA in June or July. HMRC will now complete an automatic household income check for all returning student applications.

If students pass the check, their application will receive approval.

If students fail the check, we'll write to them to advise, and their application status will revert to ‘Awaiting Information’

The November dependency sample check will continue as usual.