Education Maintenance Allowances: 2024-25

The EMA programme provides financial support to young people aged 16 to 19 from low income households to help them stay on in post-16 education; either in school or on a college course, or by taking up a Learning Agreement or Action Plan.

A weekly payment of £30 is made to eligible 16 to 19 year olds which is subject to a learning agreement or action plan and conditional on a required level of attendance being met. It is a demand-led programme and administered by local authorities for payments to chool pupils and by colleges (via the Scottish Funding Council) for payments to Further Education students, on behalf of Scottish Ministers.

For a young person to receive EMA they must meet all the eligibility criteria. This includes residency criteria, having a household income under the EMA income threshold, being of an eligible age and taking part in an eligible course of learning.

Additional information including the eligibility criteria and income thresholds can be found at www.mygov.scot/ema.

This release is accompanied by online tables that cover more detailed analysis with breakdowns by Age, Gender and Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), broken down by Local Authority level.

An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland

These statistics are official statistics. Official statistics are statistics that are produced by crown bodies, those acting on behalf of crown bodies, or those specified in statutory orders, as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.