It’s time for all parties to be clear on EMA funding

By James Mills / @SaveEMA

This week in the House of Commons the NUS, in collaboration with the Save EMA campaign, launched the EMA Satisfaction Survey 2010, which highlights the importance of Education Maintenance Allowances to those teenagers who rely on them.

For those unaware of this issue, EMAs are means-tested allowances of between £10 and £30 per week, paid to 16-to-19 year olds who stay in education and come from families where annual household income is below £30,000.

These payments may seem insignificant to some but, as the previous EMA Satisfaction Survey found, 65% of participants on the highest EMA rate of £30 could not continue to study without the allowance. The maintenance allowance removes some of the barriers to participation in education, particularly in covering costs towards transport.

At the meeting, Iain Wright, the minister responsible for EMA, made the government’s position clear: the secretary of state Ed Balls “wants to increase spending on what we give to EMA, not reduce it” and “there will be no question that we would want to cut it”.

However, the Conservative Party’s position on EMA is confusing, or confused. The Save EMA campaign has managed to get David Cameron on record to say he will not axe the scheme, but when the question is turned onto whether the Tories will cut EMA funding they become rather evasive. David Willets told Shane Chowen of the NUS only last month, when asked if he planned to cut EMA funding, that it was “difficult to commit in the current climate” to the scheme.

The Conservatives so far have refused to commit to the government’s spending plans for 14-19 year olds, which cover EMA. The reasons for this stem from the Conservatives’ education policies of “Free Schools” and “Pupil Premiums”, which have left them with a £2.5bn black hole in their education spending plans.

Furthermore, in the event of a hung parliament, where the Conservatives hold the highest number of seats, they will be reliant on smaller parties to get their policies through parliament and support any cuts in education they want to make to free up funds. One such party the Tories could rely on at Westminster to support a cut would be the SNP, who over the last year have cut EMA in Scotland by 20% and made regressive changes to the scheme’s eligibility criteria, lowering the threshold for the £30 payment and axing the £10 and £20 payments. This is despite the growing evidence that shows EMA was working in Scotland: figures released by the Scottish government only last month showed 39,110 college students and school pupils from low-income families were taking up the allowance in 2007-8, up from 38,760 in 2006-07.

The figures also showed that the allowance helps school pupils from low-income families stay on in education, with 77% of pupils using the scheme for the full year completing the attendance rates and learning expectations set out for them, compared to 70% in 2006-7. In addition, the percentage of those completing the scheme on £10 and £20 per week payments increased to 82% (the figures for 2006-7 were 74% for those on £10 payments and £73% for those on £20 payments).

These cuts to EMA in Scotland are believed by NUS Scotland to lead to almost 8,000 pupils dropping out of further education in one year alone. Needless to say, in a recession, the 8,000 young people who will be forced to leave education will go from EMA to JSA. This is what frontline cuts would mean for the poorest in our society in an age of austerity, and it shows the dividing line between Labour administrations and the rest.

Only one party has made its position on this issue clear, and although we have won the argument with other parties for why it should not be axed, we now have to fight for why it should not be cut, at all, by anyone.