Education Maintenance Allowance

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I support the motion tabled by the Labour party. All hon. Members are aware of the reasons for the introduction of education maintenance allowance. It was set up to encourage young adults to stay at school. If we change it, we will reduce its impact and discourage the people who need it from continuing in education. It was created to give people an incentive not to give up on school just because their part-time job—if they could get one—offered them only some of the money that they needed. It was created to help families that could not afford bus fares or lunches, and to ensure that children could stay on at school if that was their desire.

I wholeheartedly support EMA, and I put that on record. I have seen its importance in my constituency. Although I understand that it is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland, it is clear from the parents and students I have met that EMA is critical to the students for continuing their schooling and education. That cannot be ignored. I am here to support the 16 to 18-year-olds who clearly would not be able to remain in education and continue their studies if they did not have this help. Members from across the Chamber have recorded the issues in their constituencies, and those are replicated across the United Kingdom—in Northern Ireland and further afield.

An interesting report by the Association of Colleges states:

“Whilst we understand that the Department is taking action to protect institutions from the full effect of this budget cut in 2011-12 through the use of a safety net which limits the cuts to 3% there is concern in Colleges at the scale of the cut over the next four years which will remove £500 million from the education of young people.”

That £500 million, which has also been quoted as £555 million, should certainly be there to encourage those who would love to stay in education, but are restricted in their ability to do so by the lack of money.

I will give an example from my area that illustrates the situation across the United Kingdom. I asked the chief executive of South Eastern regional college, in Newtownards in Strangford, for figures that would enable a greater understanding of the difference that EMA makes to disadvantaged students. Many Members have indicated the number of students who will be affected by the change. In my area in Northern Ireland, it will impact on 1,708 students who need EMA to continue their education. The people who will be affected the most are the most deprived people in the community, who represent almost 50% of those students. Only 30% of the students in that group are affluent, and it could be argued that they could pay, but that leaves 70% of the students who cannot continue without EMA. It is clear from those figures that EMA has encouraged those in disadvantaged areas to stay in education. The evidence is clearly there. I have read the Association of Colleges report and visited the Save EMA website, and it is clear that those are not local figures found just in Strangford and Northern Ireland; they are found across the United Kingdom. I have read some touching stories and have spoken to pupils with a real desire to learn who rely heavily on EMA to continue learning.

There is an indication that the learner support fund that is administered by colleges and school sixth forms will receive additional money. However, the amount of funding is not clear. Until that is clear, we have to try to understand how the system works. My fear, as the MP for Strangford, and that of a great many Members, particularly on the Opposition Benches—in fairness, it exists on the Government Benches too—is that if the coalition are not careful they will create a generation of young people who feel disadvantaged, and perhaps even abandoned. As was said earlier, there will be a lost generation if we are not careful, and a generation that feels angry. What can we do to stop that happening? It must be inherent in any strategy on child poverty that young people are educated and have an opportunity to stay in education to escape the poverty trap.

Claus Moser, a German-born British academic, who was once a warden of Oxford, said:

“Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.”

I urge the coalition to go back to its doctrine of last year, under which it supported EMA. It should help to raise a generation of educated British young people—experts in academic and practical fields—and not foster people who have no proper outlet for their energy. I support the motion and urge all hon. Members to do the same.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—