Kieran Lawrence looks at autonomous weapons and the effect they could have on modern warfare
Continuing a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Angela Merkel
Ben Bland examines the fallout from the Iowa caucuses and looks forward to the New Hampshire primaries.
In the first of a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Nicholas Sarkozy
EMA - Easy Money Agreement?
On Wednesday 24th November we are to see another day of student protests; one can only hope we won’t see the disgraceful standards that some fell to earlier this month, but the less said about that the better. We're all clued in on the pressing issue of the moment- the tuition fee rises - but another issue riling student activists is the planned scrappage of the Educational Maintenance Allowance, starting in Janaury 2011.
Since September 2004 the Educational Maintenance Allowance or EMA has been draining the pockets of our country, with doubtlessly the right intentions, but did these intentions produce the right reality? For those unaware, EMA is a means tested allowance given to students in England and Wales once they enter further education. Either ten, twenty or thirty pounds a week is given to students from lower income households with termly 'bonuses' of up to one hundred pounds also up for grabs.
EMA was in place to provide an incentive to students from a low income background to enter further education and to help cover the costs of it. Good motive, but with the total incurred cost of the programme so far standing at £2,534,334,605 - is it sustainable? Clearly not. Paying pupils from lower income families money to cover the basic costs of receiving an education is a noble idea but I argue that the practicalities of such a scheme aren't so rosy. Everything you need for school you are provided with, we have free libraries across the country and a school will always have paper and pens. Many people use the excuse of travel costs, however local councils 'have to ensure that students aren't prevented from attending college or sixth form because there’s no transport service available, or because they can’t afford the fares'. Taking these factors into account there really aren't any practical costs left for EMA to cover.
So if EMA is not entirely necessary for the costs incurred in the basic act of getting to school and learning whilst you're there, we are left with EMA as a pure 'incentive'. Here I raise what may be a controversial and sensitive question to some, but are the seventeen year olds that we have to bribe to go to school really worth the money that's lavished on them in receiving their education?
Is someone who requires money for something that is a) free and b) in the end pays for itself really worth it? Research has shown that around 90% of the EMA recipients would have gone to school regardless of receiving it, and we certainly don't know how much the remaining 10% would have really gained out of their education anyway. It seems nonsensical to actually pay someone to take up the opportunity of something good that is free, I'm sure if you offered up this idea to a less wealthy nation with a different attitude it would be laughed out the door.
To me, EMA seems to be endemic of a wider social problem in our country. We've all heard the familiar whine in the sixth from common room, or seen the facebook status 'Why hasn't my EMA come through yet, how am I supposed to go out tonight! So angry!' Essentially this boils down to where is my free government money that I intend to use wholly not for the purpose its intended, but oh, I definitely need it. To coin a popular phrase – it’s the 'something for nothing society'. I'm sure even your most ardent socialist who has been in a state school cannot deny that for the most part EMA is not used for good purposes.
In advocating the cut of EMA, I do find myself battling with the horrible (and admittedly heavily romanticized) image in my brain of the disadvantaged girl studying by candle light into the dark. This is the image of a girl that wants to better herself but needs the help to get an education. I feel cruel for denying her that chance. Then I realise, I've never come across that girl (in fact I think I stole her from a scene in 'A Little Princess'). The girl I've come across wants a bit of state funded pocket money to keep herself in plentiful supply of mascara and enjoyable nights out. And whilst I'm sure the nice girl in the corners of my mind does exist, I have to say, I believe she would succeed without being paid to. After all, if EMA boils down to being the incentive of a nice bit of extra and if all my friends could get a part time job, why can't the girl in my mind stop being a victim and go out and get a part time job too?
This article couldn't be more devoid of any sense of reality.
Its this kind of middle-class ignorance of the struggles faced by low-income families, particilarly when it comes to participating in education post-16, that has created what has been the biggest backlash in schools, sixth forms and colleges since the Iraq War.
To say that "everything you need for school you are provided with", is a prime example of this. Say that to the photography student who spends over £100 a term on materials for their course. Say that to the plumbing student who can't participate in their course unless they spend £200 on safety equipment. Say that to the student who has to pay over £30 a week on public transport alone. Say that to the A level student who's College charges them for printing costs and charges up to £100 for field trips.
Would you see these young people excluded from education?
EMA helps these young people meet these costs and has meant that gone are the days when young people from deprived post codes say "education isn't for me, I won't let my family make sacrifices to pay for it." This is reflected in the increase in participation, retention and achievement of students from these backgrounds.
And don't tell me that you believe this rediculous 90% deadweight. If you bothered to check out the facts you'd know that there is a wealth of evidence from NUS, CfBT and the Institute of Fiscal Studies which disproves that figure all together which the government have made active efforts to ignore.
You'll be suprised at how many EMA claiments also have to work to support themselves, and if you did bother to talk to some young people, you'll know that finding a part time job is becoming increasingly difficult, particularly as college students are now having to compete with unemployed graduates.
This article belongs in whatever warped sense of reality sees educational elitism as acceptable. I certainly don't and neither do the thousands of young people who marched to save EMA at the NUS demo on November 10th.
A hugely refreshing piece. Typical, and amusingly predictable, that its author has already been labelled as warped, elitist and ignorant - having had the temerity to express an opinion outside the REAL field of elitism in higher education: socialism, brayed loudly and often as if it were truth. But as a junior official of the NUS, Mr Chowen is only doing his job, I guess.
EMA was a ghastly mistake, and a laughable one. You point rightly to the grotesque folly of paying citizens to attend what is already a free public service. Should, perhaps, low-income ill people have been paid to attend out-patients appointments?
You are quite correct in some of your observations on the final destination of most EMA payments. Nightclub entry and VK, generally. I have witnessed Sixth Form Students bellowing hysterically at lowly school administrators not to with-hold EMA on the grounds of truancy-style non-attendance and then claim to friends that they will be unable to attend X's 'nite out wiv her baybeez' on Facebook newsfeeds being read by students from modest backgrounds who didn't qualify for EMA and who have to work part-time for such larks. The author of the article and people who comment on it should be aware of one thing: the people who changed their vote to topple the Labour government belong not to a cadre of elitists or meanies, but are instead an exasperated horde, exhausted and irritated by watching often minimal and hard-earned salaries being lavished on the undeserving. No-one deserves to be paid for attending a free public service. And everyone has the responsibility to do as much as they can to further their own progress and learning.
Which is why EMA is dead.
Shane is pretty much spot on here. People often reject EMA because they only see conventional A-level students around themselves at school, students who don't need the benefits of EMA in many cases.
However, as Shane pointed out, we can't ignore those that do need it. Art students along with many doing vocational courses have to spend a lot of money on equipment to complete their courses. Without EMA they'll find it significantly harder to bring these resources together. Remember that EMA is for those of low income backgrounds, so it's designed for exactly this eventuallity. You need to provide an incentive to individuals to continue these courses rather than either attempt to satisfy their monetary needs through work or force them to choose a different course. The entire point of it is to make sure that some of the most talented people in this country, who also happen to be poor, don't waste their talents on some low-skilled job because they don't have the same opportunities as others, thus missing out on university, and thereby fall significantly behind their peers.
Taking this further, even those who qualify for the most amount of money - £30 a week - often find themselves working at the weekends to sustain a decent standard of living, irrespective of course. I personally know several students who are now studying at top 10 universities in the UK who all qualified for EMA, did courses that didn't include much expenditure, and still had to work for a decent standard of living. You cannot simply do a wholesale criticism of the provision of EMA based on your experience of being at a Sixth Form college where the majority of people were doing A-levels which had no need for monetary assistance.
I do believe that EMA should be specifically targeted at individuals based on course requirements as well as through a more sophisticated analysis of monetary needs, which does agree with the wastage point, but you're doing a gross misresprisentation of the system if you decide it only goes to those who squander it on VKs.
Even so, the point about wastage isn't exactly on the money. You've portrayed tax money spent on EMA as completely wasted. First of all, for those that do spend it on unneccessary items, the government collects taxes not only on the sale of these items but also on the production process of these, the revenues of companies that produce these, and the incomes of those employed in the process. This is shouldn't be ignored as it represents a large investment in several sectors of the economy, generating a much larger tax base for the government.
Even more importantly, imagine a candidate who gets paid £30 a week for every academic week at sixth form. That's £30 x (39x2) = £2340. Now imagine that person goes on to get a graduate job worth £20000. They'll pay that back in one year, and then they'll pay it back over and over again. The math is simplistic but you can see that the net gain is huge.
EMA isn't such a bad idea after all..
What the author seems to realise and Shane and #3 do not is that the vast majority of EMA recipients spend their EMA on non-educational ventures such as driving lessons, fashion and going out and getting battered. I'd be prepared to bet that Shane and #3 know this too. It's just a party line that has to be trotted out that there are thousands of worthy apprentice plumbers and photographers lavishing hundreds on educational materials. My experience suggests that, if anything, MORE than 90% of EMA is abused. Why the hell should hard-working people pay such a lot towards bar bills, Ugg boots and BSM? I do not doubt that a very small number of people on a very small number of FE courses have used EMA as it was intended. Tough, right? The vast majority publicly, boastfully lashed it up the wall or took it to 'Beefa' while many on extremely modest incomes watched in anger and resentment. We all know this. Who are we kidding when we deny it? No-one's reading this other than people in the know.
Shane's right. There has been a backlash in schools and Sixth Forms and FE. It's been a backlash AGAINST EMA. Not in support of it.
The warped sense of reality I referred has been echoed yet again in the comments left here. This rediculous idea that everyone in FE does A levels and "a very small number of students on a very small number of FE courses" couldn't be more inaccurate. A level students make up the minority of students in FE colleges and students on vocational programmes are in no way a silent minority.
It's about time we got out head out of the clouds and realised that we're not talking about people like you - people at University. So many young people on vocational courses who face disproportionately high course costs don't even want to go to University.
I believe whatever 'deadweight' exists in EMA is from the same middle class claimaints who's grandparents are deadweight in the winter fuel allowance and who's parents are deadweight in universal child benefit post 16. I frankly couldn't care less about those on 'extremely modest incomes' feeling angry and resentful - it's not these people being priced out of education.
No, Shane, of course you couldn't care less about students on very modest incomes, You only represent them in the NUS after all...
What a giveaway...
How infuriating it must be for you that so much of society lives outside, and sidelines, your socialist bubble. And you trumpet your elitism for all to see. Not only the successful, but the hard-working and skint, are the targets of your ignorance.
EMA paid for the drugs I took during school hours that dulled my mind enough to actually stay there and learn. I left school with 4 AS levels and a bag of dreams. I am yet another solid case for EMA being a great idea.
Great article. Ignore Chowder. He'll feel better if he's marginalised, anyway, it'll give him something else to get self-righteous and blame our inherently [insert a scattering of buzzwords here] society for.
comment deleted by the author
comment deleted by the author Evidently Chowder's rallying on facebook is not working. While I feel neither opinion for either side of said debate, this is merely opinion, quite obviously and should undoubtedly not be met with metanarrative arguments of supremecy in your own opinion.
I also find it rather ironic, that your ignorance itself is clear by such a generalistic stab in the dark as to assume Miss Lee was not a student of either art or photography; you are wrong, she did indeed study photography at A Level. Or to assume that she is predominantly middle class; wrong again. To assume that one's economic views solely revolve around class or subject is the worst thing to come from all of this.
A common trait of weakness, to attack anything which may threaten your conventional ideals or way of thinking. Keep writing, Miss Lee. I find your work "refreshing" (to quote the author above, and truthful.
If only we were all brave enough to say how it how it is.
I have a child in Year 10, who wants to stay on after GCSEs, do A-levels and go to University. We live in a village 6 miles from her school, my income is already less than our expenditure and every month my debt increases.
As my income is over £16,190p.a. we won't qualify for an LEA grant towards 6th form transport and although there is subsidised transport on the school bus, it still costs £12 per week. EMA would have covered this and would have ensured lunch at school as well.
What do you suggest we do other than protest?
Having recieved EMA during my college years, I'm afraid I have to disagree with a few points raised in the article too.
I went to college 20 miles away from where I lived, and while student travel on buses was cheaper than paying an adult ticket, it still cost money - money my parents didn't have. Yes, councils do have to put money into making sure all students have access to higher education. But going to college for me wasn't a necessity; I could have stayed on at my school sixth form in the same town.
Why did I choose to leave? Because the school I was at was in special measures (and has now shut down), and choosing the sixth form college I did, with an amazing track record, gave me access to subjects I wouldn't have been able to study because the school sixth-form didn't offer them, teachers who knew what they were doing and equipment my school could never have afforded. I completely credit the college I went to with the grades I ended up with, and therefore my place at York. Not only that, but it gave me access to careers advice, information, and inspired me to do the subject I'm now doing because I felt passionately that I wanted to continue with it, and not just 'to go to university'.
EMA gave me a choice of where to go. It meant I could afford to travel there without having to rely on my parents for money, and it meant I could afford college trips and equipment. For a friend of mine, who lived in a low-income household of four children and who did Art and Photography, it paid for the equipment she needed.
Yes, there are people who don't use EMA for what it's intended. There are also people who do. I'd be the first to say I knew people who got EMA and spent it on going out or other things; I also knew people (myself included) who had a part-time job to fund their social activities and didn't need to use their EMA for that. Compromise could certainly improve the system - for example, basing your EMA as much on your course as much as your household income, taking into account the number of children in a household (people I knew were above the household income to recieve EMA but were one of four or five children), and having an application system for bonuses for those who really need them, rather than just giving them out as a 'reward' for a term of good attendance for everyone who's on the programme. But there's a middle ground, surely? The abuse of the system by some shouldn't mean scrapping it completely for those who really do need it.
Reading forums and articles after the debates about the plans in January to scrap EMA has been interesting: yes, some people (and this includes some people who got EMA) feel doing away with it is for the best. There are also comments from people who's EMA is buying their lunches, paying for them to travel to college and who are now debating whether the cost of staying on to finish their further education is worth it. Some abuse the system, and that's undeniable. But others have benefited enormously from it being in place.
Does anyone get the feeling that the NUS's response is a cut and paste job? It sounds rehearsed....
Great article
I find some comments made here a disgrace, i am currently studying at sixth form, performing arts, drama and psychology, and we (sixth formers) are been seen as these creatures that sit at midnight waiting for the cash in on our bank accounts! May i say, my courses im studying dont come FREE! I have many things that have to be paid for, Exam resit, field trips for psychology, drama and performing arts to benifit my education and a more clear understanding. These field trips are not organised as a LAZY DAY OFF, we need these trips to make our education and understanding better, the college I attend, i would find it hard to disclose maybe 1 student I am aware of that spends EMA on PLAY DAYS. We use are EMA on the things its intended for, I recive £30 and would struggle to continue my education without this i travel aroung 12 miles to get to my college, and my parents recive a low income. If i pick up on a comment i come across about someone moaning about EMA so they couldnt buy some mascara! Let me say, EMA is intended for educational use only but does anyone not think we deserve to spend as little as £2 from our EMA? All the work and study we do and you moan over 2 pound me spend on ourself, have you people all got jobs? because i am now 17 and have handed no less than 600 CV's out and not heard from one job! do you exspect us to live on FRESH AIR! IF I CAOULD SPEND YOU ONE HOUR WITH THE GOVERMENT WHO HAVE SOME WHAT OF THE FINAL SAY ON EMA, IM SURE I COULD STATE SOME POINTS THAT ARE NECCESARY, NOT STUPID COMMENTS REGARDING MASCARA!
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