Education Maintenance Allowances: 2022-23

Total cost
The total spend on EMA in 2022-23 was £17.3 million, which is a reduction of approximately 7% since 2021-22 (£18.6 million). Of this, £12.4 million was spent on school recipients, which constitutes 72% of total payments; £4.3 million on college recipients (25% of total payments) and £0.6 million on Learning Agreements (3% of total payments).

Figure 2: EMA spend, 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.

During the COVID pandemic, the attendence criteria was relaxed, which will likely have contributed to the increase in spend in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years.