Attendance quick guide

You can enter weekly attendance confirmations between the Friday of that week and 5pm on the Wednesday of the following week.

Students must complete and sign their EMA Learning Agreements before you can confirm their attendance.

You should apply your Learning Centre’s general attendance and absence policy to any EMA students who have not been in attendance. Use this policy to decide if the absence was authorised or unauthorised.

If a student has an authorised absence, you should mark them as in attendance for that school week.

An authorised absence could be, but is not limited to, one of the following:

university or college visit
school sports day or match
work placement
study leave
family emergency
medical appointment
school closure

When you’re confirming attendance, be aware of any students who have said they’re experiencing extenuating circumstances on their EMA Learning Agreement. You should consider these circumstances to ensure no student is disadvantaged.

When you look at the Confirm Attendance tab of the Learning Centre Portal, these students will have a tick in the Extenuating Circumstance column.

How to confirm attendance

Sign into the Learning Centre Portal.
Go to the Worklists area.
Select Attendance Worklist.
Select the week you want to confirm attendance for.
Select Search to bring up your list of students.
To confirm attendances individually, select the In Attendance, Not In Attendance or On Holiday radio button for each student.
To confirm all students as in attendance, select Confirm All. If you select this option, you do not need to overwrite any Not In Attendance radio buttons you’ve already selected.
Once you’ve selected all the options you need, select Save.

If you’ve missed a holiday week, you can update it on this page. To do this, select the Holiday button and then Save.

If you want to confirm multiple attendances for a single student, select their surname. This will take you to the student’s record where you can make the changes.

You must confirm attendance every week. Students may rely on their EMA payments for travel or other expenses related to studying.

Attendance status options

In Attendance means the student has met your school or college’s attendance rules, including any authorised absences.

Not In Attendance means the student did not meet your school or college’s attendance rules, including unauthorised absences.

On Holiday means that your Learning Centre is officially closed for an extended period. This includes half term weeks, Easter and Christmas holidays and the summer break. You can set this in advance on the Holidays tab of the Learning Centre Portal.

Changing attendance status

Selecting a student’s surname on the Confirm Attendance tab will take you to their full academic year attendance history. You can update any previously marked attendance here if you need to.

If you change a student’s attendance confirmation from 'not in attendance' or 'on holiday' to 'in attendance', the student will receive a backdated payment.

If you change a student’s attendance confirmation from 'in attendance' to 'not in attendance' or 'on holiday', the student will be in overpayment. This can be stressful for a student to go through. It is therefore very important that you have the evidence, register or authorised absence confirmation before you mark a student as in attendance.

Updating attendance on a holiday week

If you are on the Attendance Worklist tab and try to change a student’s attendance status on a week that’s been marked as a holiday, the system will block the allocation.

To update an individual student’s attendance on a holiday week, follow these steps.

On the Attendance Worklist tab, select the week you want to confirm attendance for.
Select Search to bring up the list of students.
Select the student’s surname. This will open their attendance record where you can make the changes.

Alternatively, you can use the Customer Search area to look up the student and open their attendance record from there.

If you’re confirming a student is in attendance during a holiday week, you’ll need to enter an attendance note. This will tell us why the student should receive EMA for that week. The options are:

summer course
work experience
study class
Prince’s Trust
other

If you select Other, you’ll need to enter a note to tell us what the specific reason is.