Financial Support (Students) Debate
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Paul Goggins
Main Page: Paul Goggins (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)Department Debates - View all Paul Goggins's debates with the Department for Education
Financial Support (Students)
Paul Goggins Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing the debate. I shall take a couple of minutes to give voice to some of the students I met on Monday at the Manchester college Benchill campus in my constituency. Manchester college has 6,000 students aged 16 to 19, 60% of whom claim EMA. They told me about the practical benefits that EMA brings them. It means that they can pay for their bus fares, food at college, books and equipment.
Some of the young men, who were explaining the training that they were doing for trades, told me that they need to build up a kit while they are studying, which can cost as much as £600. Those are real, substantial costs, which the EMA is helping to offset. They all feared the burden that they may become to their parents, particularly bearing in mind that many of them have brothers and sisters who, when the EMA is gone, will face the same dilemmas. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy): we should stop using the dead-weight cost expression—it is not any way to describe hard-working students.
With regard to staying on, the majority of students told me that without EMA they would still have gone to college. Some of them would not. All, without exception, said that without EMA they would not have studied as successfully, because they would have been under more pressure to take on part-time work, and would have had the wrong balance between studying and the rest of their lives.
EMA makes an incredible difference to how students are able to focus and concentrate on their studies, settle into work on their courses and achieve a great deal. I urge the Minister to think again about this policy; it is even more destructive to the hopes and ambitions of my young constituents than the decision that the Government put through last week.