High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Thursday, January 26, 2012
Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA)
EMAs are means tested payments to young people attending school or further education college on a full time basis. EMAs were introduced across Scotland from August 2004 for 16 year olds. In academic year 2005-06 eligibility was extended to include all 17 year olds and further extended in 2006-07 to include 18 year olds. Full roll-out was completed in academic year 2007-08 with the inclusion of eligible 19 year olds.
In 2009 changes were made to the EMA scheme in response to the Scottish Government's '16+ Learning Choices - First Step Activity and Financial Support' consultation. The £10 and £20 payments were removed and the income threshold for the £30 payment was aligned with that of the 'away from home' element of further education bursaries (£20,351). An additional, higher, income threshold (£22,403) was also introduced for families with more than one dependent child. These changes were introduced for new entrants to the EMA scheme at the beginning of the academic year 2009-10 and are reflected in this publication.
In June 2010 the Scottish Government announced that as of the 2010-11 academic year, EMA bonus payments would be withdrawn from all recipients (both new and existing). The statistics in this publication take into account this change. The latest available statistics are for the academic year 2010-11.
The number of students receiving EMA payments in Scotland in 2010-11 was 34,780, this is a decrease of 7% (2,450) since the previous academic year. 61% of the young people supported attended school, with the remainder in college. Those school pupils receiving EMA accounted for 32% of all school pupils aged 16 to 19 years old in Scotland in 2010-11.
The total spend on EMAs in 2010-11 was £27.2 million. This has decreased from £33.2 million the previous year, although this is due to the ending of bonus payments prior to the beginning of this year’s scheme. £6.4 million was paid out in bonuses in 2009-10. The weekly payment figure for 2010-11 was £27.2 million compared with £26.8 million in 2009-10.
Source: Scottish Government
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