Published: 15/05/2026 · Last Updated: 24/06/2026

Bulletin for June 2026

Bonus allocation

If you've not already done so, please allocate June bonuses on the Learning Centre (LC) Portal. You should also make submissions for students who've not achieved their objectives. Please confirm all bonuses by Friday 26 June.

You should not leave any bonus allocations blank at the end of the year.

There's guidance on bonus allocations on the LC Services website.

Summer holidays

Many of you will be on summer break soon. We're opening the LC Portal early for entries for the week ending 26 June and week ending 3 July. You can submit attendances from Thursday 25 June for the week ending 26 June. This means the allocations are in place before you break for the holidays.

Please also make sure that you check the ‘unconfirmed weeks’ section of the portal. This will administer any outstanding student attendances. To do this:

Go to Worklist and then Attendance worklist in the portal.
If there's a blue box that says Unconfirmed weeks, please select it and update any weeks showing.

There's guidance on attendance on the LC Services website.

Holiday information for academic year (AY) 2026/27

If you've not already done so, please enter holiday information for AY 2026/27 on the LC 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 2027.

You'll not be able to confirm attendance for AY 2026/27 until you've entered your holidays. This could affect the scheduling of payments to students.

There's guidance on entering your Learning Centre's holidays on the LC Services website.

Service review forums

Thank you to those who attended our online and face to face service review forums. The event resources are available on the LC Services website.

EMA applications for AY 2026/27

Please encourage any new EMA students to:

complete and sign their application forms for AY 2026/27
return the signed application forms with any supporting documents to Student Finance NI as soon as they can

Students can download the application form and guidance from nidirect. 

Learning agreements for AY 2026/27

Please encourage students who receive EMA and are continuing their studies with you next academic year to sign a new learning agreement before they finish the term. This will help you at your busiest time in September as you'll have them ready to input to the portal when they return. It'll also help you to achieve your 10 day service standard and make sure students get paid as soon as possible at the start of the year.

Removing students from your AY 2026/27 portal

Please remove any students who will not be returning to learning in AY 2026/27 from the portal.

To remove students:

Go to Worklist then Application worklist within the portal.
Select 26/27 from the academic year dropdown.
Select the Remove checkbox against any students who will not be returning in September.

Please make sure you choose the 26/27 dropdown. You don't have to remove any students from this year's 25/26 portal.

You can restore a student you've already removed, however you cannot restore a student that we've removed. If you need to restore a student we've removed, please contact the Partners Support Desk.

There's further guidance on removing students from the portal on the LC Services website.

Sample checks

A reminder that we no longer carry out the 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, we'll approve their application. If a student fails the household income check, we'll reject the application. A failed application will not show on the portal and we'll notify the student that we've rejected their application. This is a new change for AY 2026/27. Students would previously have shown as 'missing evidence' on the portal.

The November dependency sample check will continue as usual for EMA.

EMA support desk

Our support desk team is available from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday 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 4050 (option 5) or email emainfo@slc.co.uk.