Would you stop this ridiculous waste of money?
Posted by AlanWCollins on Monday, 15 January 2007 08:08:06
In the 2004/2005 academic year, more than 297,000 received the Educational Maintenance Allowance nationally. So, judging by the fact that the average amount likely to be given weekly by the EMA system is £20 per week (you could earn up to £30 per week!), a total of almost £6 million was given weekly.
Now, not including the bonuses of £100 (or the cock-ups which meant that two bonuses were paid into someone's account twice within one week) that means that £214 million was wasted on the system that is nothing short of unfair.
Most of my friends at college who aren't eligible for EMA don't turn up to lessons but those on the scheme are always in class
Melanie Beckett - dfes.gov.uk/financialhelp/ema
So this gives a minority of the Country a false incentive to attend lessons, whilst others who are supposedly better off, yet don't have £30 a week to spend on their education, are being allowed to fail by the same system!
And there is only so much £30 a week can buy you. Being 17 myself, I know a lot of people who get EMA (out of disgust I didn't even bother checking to see if I was eligible). My Sixth Form provides learning resources at no cost to the student. All you have to finance are pens, paper, food and travel. So why then is one of my best friends receiving £30 a week from the Government when he has a packed lunch, gets driven in to school by a mate's parent (at no cost to him or his family) and has all of his lesson tools provided for him.
Now, it is also my firm belief that people should enter the world of work as early as possible. Even if it is only a weekend job at McDonalds, it makes it less of a shock when you enter into full-time work after your education, and can provide you with, sometimes, a very good income.
It was great not to have to get a part-time job
Damien Garwell - dfes.gov.uk/financialhelp/ema
So another of my friends is 19 years-old. He is receiving £30 a week from the Government - and lives off of it! He goes to college 3 days a week (although on one of those days he is only in for half a day) and the rest of the time he is at home he is too lazy to do work. He lives by the theory that, as a student on EMA, he does not need to get a job. And he is right, of course. After all, his parents pay for his pens, paper and learning resources for college, allowing him to spend his half-heartedly earned money on car insurance, petrol and accessories for his computer (the latter of which is unrelated to anything educational, yet still gets a third of his EMA money dedicated to it!
My final example is a friend of mine who gets £30 a week. His loving parents take £20 a week of that and spend it on cigarettes (fact) while he gets £10 a week to put in his bank account and not touch! You'd think his family don't get anything off the Government already!
So my question to David Cameron is also a plea! Why are we wasting so much of taxpayers' money when quite often little goes into education? Why not scrap the scheme and channel the money directly into the education system? There is so much that £214 million a year could do to help everyone achieve their best, not just a handful of people. My view is that the EMA system is a ridiculous waste of money that is biased in support of traditional Labour families which should be scrapped in favour of spending that would benefit all students in post-16 education. What do you think?
public spending, taxpayers, waste of money, money, ema