Education

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and wish to raise the pressing issue of the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance, which will be reduced under the replacement scheme—the enhanced learner support fund—to a paltry 13% of its current funding.

I have been overwhelmed by the correspondence and representations I have received from young people, their families and teaching staff decrying the Government’s decision. We keep hearing from the Government that nine out of 10 students would still continue with their further education without EMA. It is incredibly frustrating to hear these figures continually being trotted out because the study that this premise is based on is flawed: it asked only young people who study in school sixth forms, rather than those in further education colleges, which the majority of EMA recipients attend. Furthermore, the students polled came predominantly from white backgrounds, which does not reflect the true national make-up of the learners who receive vital EMA support.

I met a number of different student groups in Liverpool on Friday, and I asked them whether they would have started their courses without the EMA. Unsurprisingly, they said that although they would have tried, they would not have been able to afford it. Every young person I spoke to said that they put their EMA towards their travel costs, which were anything between £2 and £4.50 a day, with some students travelling up to two hours a day to attend college. They spent the remainder of their £30 a week on lunch, stationery and materials for their courses.

On a visit to the university of Liverpool, I spoke with some final-year modern language students. I met a young person called Danielle, who said that she would never have gone to college without her EMA—and if she had not gone to college, she would never have gone to university. Now, however, Danielle is about to graduate with an excellent degree and has a bright future ahead of her. The evidence from Liverpool community college about the benefit of EMA, in stark contrast to the flawed study the Government keep referring to, is that the retention rate is 5% higher for those receiving EMA than for those who do not receive it. There is a lot of similar evidence from colleges up and down the country, and at the end of today’s sitting I will present a petition collected from Liverpool community college and signed by 2,500 young people and teaching staff from across Merseyside. I share their concerns that the Government’s plans to remove EMA will have dire consequences on post-16 education in the Merseyside city region.

I have four questions for the Minister. First, why have the Government broken their pre-election pledge to keep EMA? Secondly, will the enhanced learner support fund cover students’ travel costs—a vital element of how the EMA is used? Thirdly, may we have a definitive answer on what will happen to students who have started their first year at college on the understanding that they will receive EMA throughout their course? Will they continue to receive it in their second year? Finally, according to the Government’s own figures, 76,000 young people stay on in further education because of EMA, saving the Government more than £4 billion on young people not in education, employment or training. How do the Government reconcile those figures with their continued reference to “dead-weight”—a term that many people have found incredibly offensive?

EMA offers so many young people from low-income households the opportunity to study without financial strain, and in many cases that can make the difference between a student achieving at college and not. The loss of EMA will damage our country’s economic future and is yet another betrayal of young people, in addition to many of the measures introduced over the past couple of months, whether on tuition fees, the loss of the future jobs fund and so on—the list goes on. I urge the Government to reverse their decision to abolish EMA.

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[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Lady raises a wider issue about young carers. The coalition Government are concerned about young carers generally, not just in sixth forms and in colleges but in schools, and we are identifying those young people to ensure that they have the support and help that they need. When they attend college and seek help, however, the funds should be targeted at those who are in genuine need, including young carers.

In reaching the decision to reform the system, we were concerned that the 10% of recipients who according to the evidence would be put off from staying in education but for the money from the EMA might then drop out of education. We felt that a payment designed as an incentive to participate was no longer the right way to ensure that those facing real financial barriers to participation got the support they needed. So we decided to use a proportion of the £560 million to increase the value of the discretionary learner support fund. Final decisions about the quantum of that fund have still to be taken, but we have spoken of up to three times the current value of the fund, which now stands at £25.4 million.

A fund of that size would, for example, enable 100,000 young people to receive £760 each year, and 100,000 students is about 15% of the number of young people currently receiving EMA, which is more than the 10% about whom we are particularly concerned might not stay on in education. The £760 is more than the average annual EMA of £730 paid in 2009-10, and only slightly less than the £813 paid to 16-year-olds receiving the full £30 per week. We have not yet decided, because we are still consulting on it, how the money will be paid, to whom and for what purposes.

[Luciana Berger]

Liverpool community college currently pays out £1.7 million in education maintenance allowance to 90% of its students, who are in receipt of the full £30 a week because their household incomes are less than £20,800. In addition, the college disbursed £192,000. If the Minister is saying that he will multiply the current figure by three, that is still only a fraction of what goes to those most deprived households at the moment. How on earth is that going to help those students who desperately need help to get to college, to eat and to pay for the materials that they need to do their courses?

[Mr Gibb]

By definition, if students at that college constitute the 15% most deprived young people, in terms of their access to income, they will receive more than the amount the hon. Lady says is currently being received by the discretionary learner support fund.

To help schools and colleges to administer the fund, and to ensure that those young people who really need support to enable them to continue their education or training post-16 get access to the new fund, we are working with schools and colleges, and with other key organisations such as the Association of Colleges, Centrepoint, the Sutton Trust, the Association of School and College Leaders, the National Union of Students and the Local Government Association to develop a model approach that schools and colleges can choose to adopt or adapt, to inform them how to distribute the funds, and to whom.