Education Maintenance Allowances: 2022-23

Total numbers
Throughout the 2022-23 academic year, 22,225 young people received at least one EMA payment. This represents a 7.0% decrease on the figure for 2021-22 (23,905).

Figure 1: EMA recipients, by the type of institution, from academic year 2017-18 to 2022-23.

Collection of data for 2019-20 and 2020-21 were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, as such there is a break in the time series. Represented here by the dotted line. A longer time series is available in the supplementary tables.

Figure 1 shows that the total number of EMA recipients (all institutions) is decreasing over time. In 2022-23, there were 15,135 recipients in school, down from 17,035 in 2021-22. There were 6,100 recipients in college, up from from 5,835 in 2021-22 and 990 recipients on a Learning Agreement, down from 1,035 in 2021-22.

In 2022-23, 68% of EMA recipients were school pupils, 27% were college students and the remaining 4% were young people on Learning Agreements. These proportions have changed over time, mainly due to the long term reduction in EMA recipients from college. This follows the introduction of the FE Bursary guarantee for those aged 18 and above.

It is estimated that around 12.9% of all Scottish young people aged 16-18 were in receipt of EMA in 2022-23. The proportion has been decreasing since 2016-17, when it was around 18.7% of the 16-18 population.