Education Maintenance Allowances: 2021-22

2. Impact of Covid and Data Quality

The time series presented in this publication includes years where the EMA programme has been affected – either directly or indirectly – by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The impacts of COVID-19 health protection measures should therefore be kept in mind when considering changes in these data over time.

The greatest effect of the pandemic on attendance is likely to have been in 2019-20, as the closure of schools and colleges had an impact on how EMA payments were administered. Therefore, data for 2019-20 should not be compared to other years and will be shown as a break in any time series figures and tables within this report.

The figures in this publication show the resumption of the time series from 2020-21 and some comparisons will be made between data from 2020-21 and 2021-22. However, both the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic year saw continued COVID-19 related challenges for both schools and colleges, such as COVID-19 related absenses. As such, the data in this publication are also likely to be impacted by the pandemic.

Due to the impact of COVID on EMAs and the unknown changes to the time series more generally, the decision was taken in 2022 to publish these data as Official Statistics, rather than National Statistics. This approach has been maintained for the 2021-22 Publication.

Further information on the quality of the data is included in Appendix A.