Evaluation Reports

The following EMA evaluation reports are available from the links below

Evaluation of the EMA National Roll-out

EMA was rolled out nationally in 2004 and RCU were commissioned to assess the impact of EMA on participation, retention and achievement in post-16 education. The study concluded that the introduction of a national EMA model had resulted in positive increases to post-16 staying-on rates as well as retention, achievement and success rates of those in receipt of EMA. The report can be accessed here

Education Maintenance Allowance: Evaluation with Administrative data

EMA was piloted from 1999 to 2003 and subject to an extensive evaluation that found that the introduction of EMA had a positive and statistically significant effect on participation in post compulsory education. However, it was unable to detect any significant impact on attainment at 19 or progression into Higher Education. There were a number of technical reasons why this occurred including the reduced sample sizes by age 19. IFS were commissioned to review the impact of EMA on participation and attainment during the pilot years using newly available data sets.

EMA was found to increase attainment at Level 2 and Level 3 by around 2ppts for male learners and 2.5ppts for female learners. The report estimates that to calculate the impact on those who actually received EMA, these results should be multiplied by 2.5 for outcomes at 16 and 3 for those at 17. This suggests the impact of EMA on attainment at level 2 and 3 to be 7ppts for female EMA recipients and 5ppts for male EMA recipients. The report can be accessed here

Evaluation of Extension of EMA to Entry to Employment & Programme Led Apprenticeships

Following the broadening of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) from full-time education to include young learners on two programmes within the LSC funded work-based learning family, Entry to Employment (E2E) and Programme Led Apprenticeships (PLA), from April 2006, the LSC commissioned Experian and Ipsos MORI to undertake an evaluation of the extension roll out in September 2007.

The objective of this research was to understand the effectiveness of the roll out of the extension of EMA, in particular in relation to the communication of EMA into the programmes; the operational procedures; and the impact on overarching LSC policy. The report can be accessed here