EMA provides a vital lifeline to struggling young people

By Kevin Peel / @kevpeel

There was so much bad news in today’s Comprehensive Spending Review that George Osborne’s announcement to scrap the £500 million Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) is in danger of being lost in the ether as the reality of 500,000 public sector job losses and billions of pounds of cuts to welfare, housing and local authority grants sink in.

EMA – a means-tested grant of up to £30 per week paid to 16-19 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds – provides a vital lifeline to struggling young people who wish to stay on in education after leaving school, but don’t have the financial support available to do so.

I started college in the first year EMA payments were introduced. My mum and dad both work in schools, one as a cleaner and the other as a caretaker. They didn’t have the money to buy my bus pass, pay for my meals or purchase the books and equipment I needed. Without my weekly EMA payment and the one-off grants to purchase materials I simply would not have been able to go to college. This is a situation many thousands of young people find themselves in.

EMA doesn’t just support young people to enable them to attend college, it also encourages them to stick at it and strive for success. Payment is dependent on a good attendance record and (back when I received it, though I don’t know if this is true any longer) bonuses are paid at the end of the year based on exam results. Certainly for people I knew, it incentivised them to stay in college when they were considering dropping out.

The new buzz word of the Tories is ‘fairness’, but what is fair about scrapping what Alan Johnson rightly stated today is the “single biggest contributor to to keeping kids from poorer homes in education”? Labour should expose Tory hypocrisy and duplicity on this issue (Cameron pledged to support EMA before the election) and launch a staunch defence of Education Maintenance Allowance. The futures of thousands of young people across the country depend on it.

You can sign the Save EMA petition at www.saveema.co.uk