Bulletin for March 2025

Cyber-attacks

Cyber-attacks or security incidents are becoming more frequent in the education sector. Some of these can result in the loss of our data or restricted access to our systems. This can affect our ability to make payments to our customers.

If there's a cyber-attack or security incident affecting your student data system, resulting in you being unable to make data returns to us, you must contact us as soon as possible. You should make contact with your account manager within 24 hours at the latest of becoming aware of the incident.

There's further cyber-attack guidance on the LC Services website.

LC Portal opening early for the Easter break

We're opening the LC Portal early for entries for the week beginning 7 April. You can submit attendances from Thursday 10 April, which makes sure allocations are in place before you break for the holidays. Please mark the following weeks as holidays:

• all weeks your Learning Centre is closed for holidays
• 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. Please also check the unconfirmed weeks section of the portal for any outstanding student payments.

EMA service launch and application form deliveries for academic year 2025/26

The LC Portal and EMA application service will be available for academic year 2025/26 from Monday 28 April. 

We’ve provided ‘coming soon’ posters for you to display in areas where students will see them. You can download and print them from the LC Services website.

We'll start sending out your allocation of EMA application packs for academic year 2025/26 on week starting 24 March.

If we sent you less than 20 forms last academic year, we’ll no longer send you a delivery as you or your students can download and print the application forms and guidance from the NI Direct website.