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EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) is a scheme providing young people who wish to continue in education after school leaving age with an incentive to earn awards through good attendance and achieving agreed objectives.
Depending on your household’s annual income, you could get £10, £20 or £30 weekly. This is paid every two weeks, so you would get £20, £40 or £60 every fortnight. See How much can I get? to find out how these amounts will be worked out.
You can spend this money on whatever you want. It can help to cover day-to-day costs such as travel, books and equipment.
As well as getting money to help you stay on, you will also have an Learning Agreement with your school or college. This agreement will tell you what you need to achieve in order to stay on the EMA scheme, and get your weekly awards and bonus payments. If you meet the attendance and performance objectives that you agreed with your school or college, you can earn bonus payments of £100 on top of your fortnightly EMA.
Who can get it?
Your Age
To get EMA in most cases you must have been aged between 16 and 18 in the previous academic year.
This means that if you are studying in academic year 08/09 your date of birth must be on or between 1 September 1990 and 31 August 1992.
*An academic year refers to the usual dates that schools and colleges run their courses from. An academic year normally starts on 1 September and ends 31 August.
Your Course
Your course must also be ‘eligible’ for you to get EMA. There are lots of courses that you could do, and get EMA, such as:
- GCSEs;
- ‘A’ or ‘AS’ levels;
- BTEC, GNVQ, NVQ courses;
- Basic Skills courses
To see more about courses, go to How can I get it?
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