By Richard Johnstone | 19 July 2011
The government’s decision to scrap the grant paid to 16 to18 year-olds in full time education was made too late in the academic year for students to make informed decisions about their future study, MPs have said.
The Commons education select committee was examining the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance, which was paid to 600,000 students to encourage them to stay in education. The MPs’ report, published today, found that the government should have done more to assess the impact of the allowances on participation, attainment and retention, before deciding any changes.
The closure of the programme, which cost £553m in 2009/10, was announced in October last year, shortly after the academic year began.
The ‘sudden’ decision meant that some students had already begun courses in the expectation that they would continue to receive their EMA. The MPs said there should have been a ‘more measured and public analysis’ of the planned changes.
The launch in March of a £180m bursary to be allocated by schools to 12,000 students in care, care leavers, and those on Income Support indicated that the government had misjudged the scale of support necessary, the committee said. ‘Precious months’ were lost while the plans were revised.
The committee’s report, Participation by 16–19 year olds in education and training, also concludes that the bursary scheme will ‘inevitably lead to inconsistencies which could distort young people’s choices of where to study’.
In scrapping the EMA, the committee said that the government ‘relied heavily’ on an argument that 90% of recipients would have chosen to study with or without the benefit of the allowance. However, the MPs were ‘not persuaded’ that bursaries administered by schools and colleges would necessarily be fairer or more discriminating than a reform of the EMA would have been.
Committee chair Graham Stuart said: ‘Young people taking life‑defining decisions at 16 need clear information on the support they may receive and deserve better than rushed and ill-thought-through reforms.
‘We accept that changes and savings need to be made but the organisation of the change has been far from smooth. Decisions on how much will be available for distribution by each school or college have been taken far too late, and it is 16 year-olds who have suffered uncertainty as a result. That should not have been allowed to happen.’
The National Union of Students said that the report showed that ‘young people had been let down by the scrapping of EMA and confusion over financial support for the poorest learners’.
Toni Pearce, NUS vice president for further education, said: ‘Once again, a thorough investigation finds that [Education Secretary] Michael Gove hurried the decision to scrap EMA and planned the implementation of its replacement poorly.By basing policy on flimsy, widely discredited evidence and bungling the handling of EMA's meagre replacement, ministers have badly failed young people.’
The University and College Union said it welcomed the committee’s recognition that the government should have done more to acknowledge the EMA’s impact before axing it. The union added that Gove’s ‘insulting assertion’ that the EMA was ‘a deadweight cost’ has been proven to be mistaken.
