Education Maintenance Allowances: 2024-25
Statistics on Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) recipients and payments made in 2024-2025.
Total numbers
Figure 1: EMA recipients, by the type of institution, from 2016-17 to 2024-25.
Collection of EMA data for 2019-20 and 2020-21 were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic creating a break in the time series, represented by the dotted line in Figure 1. A longer time series which goes back to 2006-07 is available in the supplementary tables.
Table 1: EMA recipients, by the type of institution, from 2021-22 to 2024-25.
|
Year |
School and Learning Agreements |
College |
All Institutions |
|
2021-22 |
18,070 |
5,835 |
23,905 |
|
2022-23 |
16,125 |
6,100 |
22,225 |
|
2023-24 |
15,095 |
6,445 |
21,540 |
|
2024-25 |
14,630 |
6,610 |
21,240 |
Throughout 2024-25, 21,240 young people received at least one EMA payment. This represents a 1.4% decrease on the total figure for 2023-24 (21,540) and continues the decreasing long-term trend.
69% of these EMA recipients in 2024-25 were school pupils or on a learning agreement while 31% were college students. In comparison in 2023-24, 70% of EMA recipients were school pupils or on learning agreements and 30% were college students.
Table 1 shows there was a decrease of 3.1% of EMA recipients who were school pupils or on learning agreements from 15,095 in 2023-24 to 14,630 in 2024-25. For recipients at college there was an increase of 2.6% from 6,445 in 2023-24 to 6,610 in 2024-25.
Overall, the total number of EMA recipients at school or on a Learning Agreement has decreased since 2016-17. For recipients at college the total number receiving an EMA payment has decreased overall between 2016-17 and 2021-22, but has been increasing year-on-year since 2021-22.
The increase in college recipients since 2021-22 may partly be explained by Annual Participation Measure data published by Skills Development Scotland. Participation of young people aged 16 to 17 years in Further Education has increased by around a third from 7,990 in 2021-22 to 11,163 in 2024-25.
It is estimated that around 11.9% of all Scottish young people aged 16 to 18 years were in receipt of EMA in 2023-24, a decrease from 12.3% in 2022-23. The proportion has been decreasing since 2016-17, when it was around 18.6% of the population aged 16 to 18 years. As those aged 19 years only make up 0.2% of the total number of EMA recipients they are excluded from this analysis.
Contact
Email: FHEstatistics@gov.scot