Evaluation of Education Allowance Pilots: young people aged 16 to 19 years

This is the fourth and final report of the longitudinal quantitative evaluation of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) pilots. The evaluation was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) from a consortium of research organisations, led by the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP), and including the National Centre for Social Research, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling (NICEC). The main aims of the evaluation were to assess the impact of the EMA pilots on participation, retention and achievement in post-16 full-time education. The pilots were introduced because of policy concerns about participation rates in post-16 education, particularly among young men and those from lower socio-economic groups, the proportion of young people who were not in education, employment or training (NEET) after the end of compulsory education, and low rates of retention in education at 17 and 18 years of age (Chapter 1.1). EMA was rolled out nationally in 2004 (Chapter 1.2).