Education Maintenance Allowances: 2024-25

Terminology

Learning Agreements superseded Activity Agreements in 2022. The phrase Learning Agreement has been used in the publication tables when referring to historic data to maintain consistency. Learning Agreements may also be known and referred to as Action Plans. Both terms are used interchangeably by Local Authorities.

Data sources

For schools and Learning Agreements, the Scottish Government collects the data on EMAs from Local Authorities (the administrators of the EMA payments) and collated by SEEMiS (Scottish Educational Establishment Management Information Systems).

For colleges, the data is collected from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), who administer, collate and validate the data.

Where analysis refers to institutions rather than schools or colleges, data from both Scottish schools and Scottish colleges have been combined to report on all Scottish institutions.

Coverage

EMA is a means tested payment to young people participating in school or college, or who have a Learning Agreement or Action Plan. The data included in this publication cover those who participate in the EMA programme, but not necessarily all of those who were eligible to participate.

Although measures are taken within both the school and college data to minimise the chances of more than one record being created for the same student, an element of duplication remains possible where a student moves from school into college in the same year. For the 2024-25 data there were 345 duplicate Scottish Candidate Numbers, around 1.6% of the initial population.

Age

The age of recipient refers to their age as at the 30th September in the year of study. Although young people cannot receive EMA until they are aged 16 years, some are recorded as aged 15 years for this reason.

Year

Throughout the publication where year is mentioned it can refer to either school year or academic year as this publication covers both school and college data.

Population estimate

The population estimates are based on the National Records of Scotland’s mid-year estimates. For those aged 16 to 18 years, the estimates are obtained by increasing the age of 13-year-olds from the appropriate number of years earlier. This approach avoids the estimates being susceptible to changes in net migration (including incoming overseas students). As those aged 19 years only make up 0.2% of the total number of EMA recipients they are excluded from this analysis.

Annual Participation Measure

The Annual Participation Measure is produced by Skills Development Scotland to identify what young adults aged 16 to 19 years are participating in during the financial year. It combines a variety of data sources including those from local authorities, colleges, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS).

Further information can be found at Annual Participation Measure - Skills Development Scotland.

Coverage of spend data

The financial figures in this publication refer to the amount spent on EMA payments only. This publication does not cover any other costs associated with the delivery of the EMA programme, such as administrative costs. All financial figures in this report and the associated tables are presented in nominal terms and are not adjusted for inflation. Figures show total spend on EMA payments, which is not impacted by students moving from school to college which can result in duplicate records.

Historically, a small percentage of local authority payments (estimated in previous years to be less than 0.5%) are not recorded on the local authority’s management information systems. In 2023-24, a higher proportion of payments in Na h-Eileanan Siar were made outside the record management system due to a cyber attack. The impact of this is negligible overall, however it should be considered when making local authority time series comparisons for Na h-Eileanan Siar, with the value for 2023-24 suppressed.

Data presentation

In all tables and figures, the number of recipients has been rounded to the nearest 5 for presentation purposes. Figures on EMA spend have been rounded to the nearest hundred thousand pounds. Unknown values are not displayed individually in tables but are included in totals. Figures may not sum to totals due to rounding and the inclusion of unknown values. Unless stated otherwise, percentages are calculated from unrounded values.