Published: 11/11/2026 · Last Updated: 11/11/2026
Bulletin for October 2026
Welcome to academic year (AY) 2026/27
Welcome back to a new year of EMA. As always, we appreciate your help with administering EMA for your students.
EMA Learning Agreements
Please remind your students to sign part 2 of their EMA Learning Agreement form. Students must do so before 2 December to be eligible for the January bonus payment. If they do not sign by this date, they'll not be eligible for the January bonus.
We recommend that you ask students to sign any applications you have at ‘Missing Evidence or Awaiting validation’ before 2 December. This is to secure the bonus entitlement if we approve the application.
We recommend that you ask students to sign any applications you have at ‘Missing Evidence or Awaiting validation’ before 2 December. This is to secure the bonus entitlement if we approve the application.
Attendance and illness guidance
You can find guidance on attendance and illness on the LC Services website. Please familiarise yourself with the guidance before contacting your Account Manager.
EMA applications for academic year (AY) 2026/27
Please remind your learners that they can still apply for their EMA funding for AY 2026/27. We’ll backdate payments to the approximate date that we receive their application form.
Learners can download the application form and guidance from NI Direct.
Learners can download the application form and guidance from NI Direct.
Service standards reminder
Please make sure you follow these points in the service standards:
- check your students’ attendance information is correct before submitting weekly attendance confirmations
- return a weekly attendance confirmation for each of your students as 'in attendance' or 'not in attendance'
- make weekly attendance confirmations on the LC Portal before 5pm on Wednesday for the previous week
You can find guidance on submitting attendance confirmations on the LC Services website.
Performance reports
Please take the time to check how your Learning Centre is performing against the service standards. You can track your performance in real time in the LC Portal. To do this navigate to the homepage of the portal and then select 'Reports' then 'Service standards'.
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.
You can contact the support desk on 0300 200 7089 option 5 or email emainfo@slc.co.uk.