The Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) has been cancelled by the Tory led coalition government.
Why The Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) Was Important to Poor Children
I’m forty years old which means when I was 16 there was nothing like EMA (under a Tory government), the same is true for my wife (a few years younger). Both of us would have been considered as children in poverty as we grew up.
I was from a single parent family (relied completely on benefits: my mother rarely worked) and my wife who had a mother and father (stable family life), the latter of which was a typical hard working man who always had a job, but this was under the Tories with no national minimum wage and was earning around £75 a week!!!
Conversation with my mother at 16:
Me: “I’m thinking about staying on at school to study A-levels.”
My mother: “I ain’t paying for it.”
End of conversation.
Took almost two years of dead end jobs before I made the decision to go back into full time education while signing on unemployed (I lied my ass off for years to get a decent education), went to University to study genetics.
My wife had a similar conversation with her mother while she was 15 years of age.
My wife: “A friend is doing an art course at college I’m interested in.”
Mother: “I ain’t paying for it.”
End of conversation.
I kid you not, we pretty much had identical conversations with our mothers, because I’m afraid families in poverty see little value in a decent education. My wife’s mother would say to her daughter while she was trying to study for exams “if you don’t know it now you’ll never know it”.
In our experience (from ~25 years ago) as children in poverty you finish school at 16 and find the first job you can so you start contributing (pay your own way).
While EMA existed poor kids could pay their own way through A-levels etc… muting their parents calls of “I ain’t paying for it” allowing poor kids like us to be more socially mobile (I make a very good living now).
I understand the annual EMA budget was around £560 million and the new budget for whatever will replace it (not announced yet) will be around £60 million! I do like how the new Conservative government regularly cancels programs like the Education Maintenance Allowance BEFORE having a new program to replace it!
So much for social mobility under the Conservatives :-(
David Law
I am in my final year of A levels and a vast number of my friends get EMA, but, although I feel that it is a brilliant scheme, there is issues with the way it is calculated. It doesn’t take into consideration the number of people in your house nor the outgoings like food and electricity, all the necessary things a family needs. They also do not think about if the child works. They shouldn’t scrap the program but maybe reform it so it is fair to all.
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TBH I think things have moved on from this slightly. Given that we now have a minimum wage and a fairly generous welfare system (albeit one being cut), I don’t see school being totally unaffordable to that many people, especially as many of the poorest families qualify for free school meals. The only real cost is transport, which is only a massive problem for those who live in cities.
I know people on EMA who spend it on whatever they feel like – it does not contribute to their school-related costs at all.
We clearly need a much more targeted system, and we need one which provides only for those who most need it – ideally one whose focus is on things like free bus passes rather than cash handouts.
We need cuts, and the EMA system is too generous to too many people. Sorry, but it’s true. Of course the most needy should be helped, but I know a lot of people at my sixth-form who don’t need/ misuse their EMA.
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And the new scheme is £180m
I did this all 40 to 50 years ago after leaving school at 16. It’s perfectly possible to get an education by night classes; day release and work you way through education. Work itself allied to education (not training per se) will expand your horizons and is in itself not a barrier to self improvement.
What is made difficult for young persons now is the lack of example by self improvement by others as much of our society is looking one way or another for more money from the Government which of course is by far the richest institution in the country (compulsory contributions by all !)and all of this is made worse by the implied or direct propagation of the idea that nothing is possible without the help of politicians and if they cannot help you are a doomed victim of the system.
This is of course total nonsense and contrary to all human effort; the achievements of the last 200 years had little to do with governments. So literally work you way to betterment; if you are unemployed spend the huge amount of time at your disposal wisely – go to college or to the local library to make a beginning. Remember to read the lives of great men who did not submit to this nonsense and remember if you don’t understand how society works go and find out !
Comment on Why EMA was Important to Children in Poverty
This is a topic which has bugged me since I was at college a few years ago (the same year the scheme was initiated).
Like most people that choose higher education, I had every intention of studying hard and walking away with good grades. However, as my parents house was an hour round trip away, I had to own and run a car to get there and back.
Due to my step-father living in the same house as us, under the EMA criteria we – as a household – did not qualify and, as such, I had to have 3 evening jobs on top of college to afford the increasing fuel, tax and insurance costs. In the government’s eyes, my outgoings should’ve be paid for by my step-father!
This would’ve been fine had it not been for the fact my peers would brag about the booze they were going to buy with their weekly £30 benefits – a sum of money which would have gone a long way towards my fuel cost.
Subsequently, I was often too tired from working all hours to concentrate and my grades began to slip so badly it was better for me to quit college and start a low level job.
Rather than just handing out cash to anyone who puts their hand out, I’d like to see a government that properly vets candidates.
Too much of a high level criteria
Could have been a good system, but the way it was decided who should get EMA was ridiculous. I know so many people my age who are in quite well off families but generally have to pay for things themselves anyway. There are also on the other hand kids I know who were on EMA that had jobs on top of EMA and I found that the kids who got EMA were not even spending it on things that they apparently needed. Too many people I heard saying things like “Yay, EMA has arrived, now I can buy that DVD/game/alcohol/other non essential things.” Even the conditions for getting it were soooo often avoided. I knew countless poeple who would forge teachers signatures, or get another teacher to sign it, get a friend to sign it, to prove they were going to lessons even though they clearly were not. Also the whole single parent thing giving you EMA is outrageous as well. The fact that being cared for by a single parent comes under the conditions for EMA just gives off even more negative vibes about single parents not being capable of supporting children. Obviously there are exceptions to all my points and I’ll bet their were a fair few people that needed EMA but nowhere near the majority. In my opinion it could not possibly work because there are just too many things to take into account. Do the persons parents help them out?, do they have a job?, do the majority even spend it properly? (No), Have they really met the conditions? Bad idea, and bad ways to calculate who deserves it. Like many people here have been saying, we do need cuts, but having people stuggling through cuts whilst handing out free money to a majority of kids who spend that money on things that other people can’t bloody afford is just stupid. Glad its gone
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