Education maintenance allowances: 2017 to 2018

3. EMA payments

Total cost

The total spend on EMA in 2017-18 was £23.0 million. This is a decrease of £1.7 million from the previous year due to the reduced number of recipients.

Of this, £15.7 million was spent on school recipients (68.4% of total payments), £6.6 million on college payments (28.7%) and £0.7 million on activity agreements (2.9%).

The proportion of EMA spends for each gender was 50.9% for females and 49.1% for males.

Average payment per person, by gender

The average payment per EMA recipient was £788 in 2017-18. This is an increase from £777 in the previous year.

Amongst EMA recipients, school students received on average £839 over the academic year, college students £725 and activity agreements £506. The difference is due to the number of weeks in which each type is eligible to receive the benefit.

On average, female recipients receive £793, slightly more than male recipients (£784).

Average payment per person, by deprivation

Students from the most deprived areas are more likely to receive EMA: 10,810 recipients from Quintile 1 (the most deprived) versus 2,370 recipients from Quintile 5 (the least deprived).

However, EMA recipients from the most deprived areas receive on average a smaller amount (£772 for Quintile 1 versus £788 for Quintile 5)^[5].

Figure 3: Recipients and average payments by SIMD level, 2017-18