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.

WGLG FE term 2 payments

Please check that you've marked all term 2 attendance confirmations as either in attendance or not in attendance before finishing for the Easter break. This will mean we can make any payments that students are due before the end of term.

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

The Learning Centre Portal and EMA/WGLG FE online application service will be available for academic year (AY) 2025/26 from Monday 28 April.

Please encourage your students to apply online where possible. This helps us process forms quickly. To promote the online service for AY 2025/26, 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 allocations of EMA and WGLG FE application packs for academic year 2025/26 on week starting 24 March.

We'll distribute paper applications as follows:

• all schools and colleges (excluding special educational needs) will receive 50% of the amount sent for AY 2024/25
• special educational needs schools or colleges will get the same number of forms as in AY 2024/25
• if we sent you less than 20 forms 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 Student Finance Wales website

The EMA and WGLG FE academic year start date will be Monday 8 September 2025. We'll count the 10 day period for students to sign their learning agreements from then.