Education Maintenance Allowance

Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) (Welsh: Lwfans Cynhaliaeth Addysg; LCA) is a financial scheme applicable to students aged between sixteen and nineteen and those undertaking unpaid vocational or non-university academic learning in the United Kingdom (except England) and whose parents had a certain level of taxable income.

Research by the Learning and Skills Council in 2006 suggested that even with the EMA, parents earning less than £30,000 a year still struggle to support teenagers enough to enable them to stay in education past 16.

[3] In tests done by 56 of the 150 English local education authorities in 2004, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Loughborough University found staying-on rates improved up 5.9 percentage points among those who were eligible.

Bribing young people to sign up for courses they may not complete, might make ministers' targets look achievable – but they do absolutely nothing to help solve this country's chronic skills shortage."

The United Kingdom Government under the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition confirmed on 20 October 2010 that the Education Maintenance Allowance scheme in England was to be cancelled as part of a programme of budget cuts.