The 16 to 19 Bursary Fund was introduced in September 2011 and provides financial support to young people who face significant financial barriers to participation in education or training post-16. The fund differed from its predecessor, the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), in two key ways. First, it had a significantly lower budget and second, whereas for the EMA grant amounts were clearly defined and related to parental income, the majority of allocation was essentially discretionary. Schools, colleges and training providers would receive an overall budget for spending on bursaries but
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The 16 to 19 Bursary Fund was introduced in September 2011 and provides financial support to young people who face significant financial barriers to participation in education or training post-16. The fund differed from its predecessor, the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), in two key ways. First, it had a significantly lower budget and second, whereas for the EMA grant amounts were clearly defined and related to parental income, the majority of allocation was essentially discretionary. Schools, colleges and training providers would receive an overall budget for spending on bursaries but could choose their own eligibility schemes in terms of the amount per award, how they were paid (cash or in kind) and how frequently they were paid (e.g. weekly, termly or yearly).
The Institute of Education and the Institute for Fiscal Studies were commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE) to undertake a statistical impact analysis of this reform. This report provides estimates of the policy's impact on participation and attainment during the 2011/12 and 2012/13 academic years, and provides a cost-benefit analysis of the policy taking into account effects on lifetime earnings and exchequer tax receipts and benefit payments. The headline impacts indicate that the reform led to an average 1.6 percentage point (ppt) fall across the time period in full-time participation amongst Year 12 students who would otherwise have been eligible for the full EMA award. The findings for attainment suggest that the impacts were the most negative among the poorest students: among those who would have been eligible for the full EMA award, there was a 2.3 ppts fall in the L2 achievement rate, leading to a 1.1 ppts fall across the whole Year 13 cohort. Importantly, it is likely that the overall impact estimates presented in this report underestimate the true impacts of the policy reform in question. Nevertheless, this cost-benefit analysis estimates that the long-run costs from the policy because of reduced tax receipts outweigh the short-run savings from expenditure cuts, and that is without taking into account wider impacts including the effects on productivity, crime or health.
Edited excerpts from publication.
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