Sentinel and the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA)

Sentinel takes the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA)in it's stride. A minor update is all that is required to facilitate EMA reporting.

(PRWEB) January 18, 2004 --The EMA will be launched nationally by the Government in September this year. It is a weekly payment of up to 30 paid to each young person for up to three years, who stays in education after the age of 16. They may also get a bonus for good progress in their course work.

All schools and colleges must participate. The allowance will depend on the adequate monitoring of Attendance, Coursework & Progress by the school or college.

One Important aspect of the additional burden this will place on administration will be to monitor attendance and record authorised and unauthorised absence throughout the
term on a daily basis to collate weekly attendance data and then make weekly payment decisions and record reasons for decisions not to pay and to retain these for six years in the event of an appeal and audit purposes.

In addition the school or college must make weekly reports to the Assessment & Payment Body (APB) and ensure that attendance monitoring is not being abused.

The bonus payments depend not only upon simple daily attendance on site, but actual attendance at the individual course lectures and modules, thus session by session recording provided by Sentinel, may well be necessary to produce the level of monitoring required.

Once the reporting format to the APB has been finalised, an appropriate output report will be included within Sentinel.

In many instances, Sentinel may only need to be installed at a limited number of access points, which would enable a low budget system to be employed