OK – I give up
The response to my idea of pensioners donating their Winter Fuel Allowances to teenagers who will no longer – from next year – receive Educational Maintenance Allowances just hasn’t quite taken off. The people who did respond – about twenty – have been very kind but I don’t sense many of them are actually pensioners themselves.
I still think it could have worked. But unless it went viral spontaneously (if that isn’t a tautology) it needed some big names and some free PR and I just don’t have the time or energy to do the recruitment.
So ‘thank you’ to those who have discussed it with me and the people who commented on the two earlier blogs.
In one way it is a bit embarrassing to get publicly enthusiastic and then have to back away, but ultimately this relied on people finding the basic proposition: well-off- pensioners-who-have-been-protected-from-the-cuts-help-vulnerable-youngster-who haven’t – seductive and the only to find that out was to ask.
Anyway, all is not lost. The experience has made me think up a modern saying:
You can’t make an innovative omelette without getting egg on your face.
WFAs 4 EMAs – we’re on our way
Thank you for the eleven positive (and one negative) response to my post yesterday about pensioners donating their winter fuel allowance (WFA) to sustaining 16-18 year old students who will, from next year, lose their Educational Maintenance Allowances (EMA).
I said I wanted 500 expressions of support by Friday so I’m not exactly on track, but those who have responded are keen so I am hoping for a tipping point in the next fifty hours. Any help gratefully received
In the meantime I have been exploring the idea a bit more with various friends. Here are some new angles:
My friend who understands the technology of the Department of Work and Pensions tells me there is no way Government could simply redirect WFA on request. Apparently its ancient mainframe system just doesn’t have this adaptability.
So, the best way to proceed is probably to give pensioners a simple on-line, or downloadable paper, form which they send to their bank. The form would ask their bank to pay £250 to the holding charity on a date soon after the WFA is paid in to their account by the Government. This is on the assumption that the pensioner has their pension and WFA paid directly into their bank (which is surely the case with the vast majority of better off pensioners). What I haven’t yet ascertained is whether all the WFA payments go in on the same day or in a very condensed period – this would obviously make it easier.
The next issue concerns distribution and administration. The simplest thing here would be to know the current distribution of EMAs in terms of the number of students going to each college and school. The funds collected from pensioner donations would then be redistributed to the schools and colleges on exactly the same basis, leaving the institution to decide how best to use the money to help low income students. It is vital therefore that we get support and access to data from the Department for Education. Donating pensioners could also indicate whether they want their local college to contact them in relation to opportunities for mentoring or reciprocal contribution of time and muscle power from the benefiting students.
For reasons of reassurance and credibility there is general agreement that it would be good to launch the idea with a pledge bank type threshold (i.e. it is only when 100,000 pensioners have agreed that the letters and forms to the bank get sent).
Another friend who advises companies on thought leadership thinks that if the scheme got off the ground a major corporation might come in and offer to match fund the donations.
One kind commenter has already offered to help with the web-site and I am now looking for a bright, politically savvy, volunteer to spend a few days working on the details and lobbying Government.
Whether or not the RSA stays involved (something I will have to ask my Trustees and Fellows) I sense this really could happen. If anyone wants to tweet about it or set up a Facebook page or online petition please feel free.
Thank you
Fuel for learning – help me light a fire
I posted last Friday on the abolition of Educational Maintenance Allowances (EMAs), the grants of between £10 and £30 a week made to disadvantaged 16-18 year olds.
Later that evening I met my father and his partner for a drink. In the course of the conversation they told me how embarrassed they were about keeping their winter fuel allowance (WFA) when so many other worthy causes were being cut (neither of them is exactly on their uppers). A light went on in my head.
Roughly speaking, three pensioners’ WFAs plus gift aiding would be equivalent to providing a teenager with a £25 a week allowance for three ten week terms. So, how about a scheme (‘fuel for learning’) in which pensioners can opt to redirect their WFA to providing an EMA-like allowance?
Before it is abolished next year we can take advantage of the current means testing structure for EMAs and the conditionality rules which mean youngsters don’t get the allowance unless they attend the lectures.
The scheme might work like this:
- The RSA sets up a web site on which through a single click a pensioner can redirect their WFA to helping to replace EMAs. We would need Government help for this.
- The pensioner can choose either simply to direct their donation to a central pot which would be distributed according to current EMA expenditure or to have a more personal relationship.
- The latter might involve choosing an educational establishment (sixth form or FE college) to which to direct the WFA, offering to be available to provide mentoring support to a student or even requesting that a supported student agree to provide up to a set limit of hours in reciprocal labour (mowing the lawn etc).
- For the whole idea to be worthwhile it would need to achieve scale, so it could be designed on the same lines as Pledgebank whereby pensioners’ commitment to donate their WFA only gets acted upon when, say, 100,000 have signed up.
I would love for the RSA to do this. And there are people in Government I believe would help us. What better evidence could there be that the Big Society ideal can take concrete form.
So what do you think? If you like it, please pass the idea on.
I am setting myself the target of getting 500 expressions of support by the end of the week. This would be remarkable given that my average number of comments is about five. But the idea will only work if it goes viral so I need to set the barrier high.
Over to you
Membership ambitions
I am burning the midnight oil tonight finalising a speech I am delivering tomorrow on the role of membership organisations in building a Big Society and came across two quotes which I thought captured well some of the problems I have tried to address in the speech:
First, Harvard based political scientist, Theda Skocpol, from her essay ‘Advocates without members – the recent transformation of American civil life’.
‘In huge membership federations, local chapters were widespread, full of leaders and members seeking to recruit others. Hundreds of thousands of local and supralocal leaders had to be elected and appointed every year. Privileged men and women who climbed ladders of vast membership organisations had to interact in the process with citizens of humble or middling means and prospects. Classic membership federations built two-way bridges between classes and places and between local and translocal affairs. Now, in a civic America dominated by centralised, staff-driven advocacy organisations, the bridges are eroding’.
While only some of this account may apply to the UK, one thing we do know for sure is that recent decades have seen the emergence of an ever steeper social class gradient for civic participation. Putting these trends together in an analysis of social capital in Britain, Paola Grenier and Karen Wright conclude:
‘There are two fundamental factors which undermine the effectiveness of modern civic participation to generate trust across society. The first is the increasing concentration of participation – largely in the A, B, and C1 social classes. The second is the commodification of membership and volunteering, making it increasingly about private benefit, hollowing out its social meaning, and weakening its relationship with social capital’.
As RSA Fellows and regular readers of this blog will know, I haven’t exactly been covering myself in glory recently in terms of engaging the Society’s members. But hopefully when we have found an agreed way forward on the composition of the Trustee Board we can get back to the Society nationally in its regions and locally exploring how best to create a culture of participation in the Fellowship.
So, last week, at one of our regular staff meetings, I was delighted that several hands popped up to tell us about new Fellows’ networks springing up – in Milton Keynes, Oxford and London, to name but a few.
The example of one London group is particularly interesting – called Profit with Purpose, it is a network of RSA Fellows who are looking at ways in which organisations can make social responsibility central to the way they operate, rather than something additional that can only be sustained when business is healthy.
This week about forty members of the network met to debate whether businesses, and law firms in particular, ought to work towards positive social and environmental ends, even when this conflicts with other goals. I hear a lively discussion was held around the issue of moral responsibility and how we reconcile our individual responsibilities with the values of the organisations we belong to. One of the speakers, himself a Fellow, Professor Simon Robinson, argued that it is up to us to ask questions about what is ethically valuable, to give an account of ourselves and invite others to do likewise.
This network sounds to me like an example of RSA Fellows doing exactly that – addressing a pressing issue through informed debate and practical action. In fact, the group has ambitious plans to gather together Fellows’ good practice in business and then develop an ideal picture of what a socially and environmentally responsible business could look like.
If there are Fellows (or even non Fellows) out there with a corporate background or an interest in this subject and would like to get involved, our Networks Manager for London, Sam Thomas (sam.thomas@rsa.org.uk), would love to hear from you.
OMG CSR EMA RIP
Taking a car load of teenage boys to play football in Surrey last night, I found the Comprehensive Spending Review has certainly had an impact. The boys were incensed by the abolition of Educational Maintenance Allowances (the weekly allowance of between £10 and £30 paid to 16-18 year olds in full time education). They predicted dire consequences including fewer kids from poorer families staying on in education, more students failing to attend lectures (EMA payments get withdrawn if students miss classes) and a rise in the crime rate.
Although understandable, were their predictions so over the top? There surely will be consequences. While most people go to school reasonably close to where they live, poorer teenagers are more likely to go to FE colleges post 16 and these are often several miles from home. Without EMAs these travel costs may be prohibitive. A couple of the boys to whom I gave a lift last night have cleaning jobs early in the morning but, again after travel costs, these jobs won’t compensate for the loss of £30 a week.
I am not surprised that EMAs were targeted by the Coalition. I don’t suppose many cabinet ministers know youngsters who receive the allowance, which must disproportionately flow into Labour constituencies. But there is a more substantial reason for Treasury hostility, one which led to tough questions being asked about EMA cost effectiveness even in my time in Government.
This problem is the deadweight. EMAs were introduced as a way of persuading poorer kids to stay in education. But they are a blunt tool given estimates which suggest about four out of five people who get the allowance would probably have stayed on in education anyway. If the country is facing austerity then a form of spending in which only 20 pence in the pound is having the desired effect is surely an obvious target? It may be tough on my son’s mates but life is tough and the public finances must be brought under control.
To some this is an open and shut case. But here are three possible reasons to think twice:
1. All known methods of increasing post compulsory participation among disadvantaged groups are expensive and the EMA is actually comparative quite cost effective.
2. The conditional element of EMAs (as I said you don’t get the allowance if you don’t do the course) may be the reason why there have been impressive improvements in educational attainment among the EMA group.
3. Even in a time of austerity isn’t there a case for saying that poor young people who stay in education should have enough money to be able to pay the basic costs of food, clothing and travel?
The Coalition says it will replace EMA with a more targeted form of support but this lacks credibility. First because the amount of money the Government says it intends to save on EMAs (£0.5 billion) is near enough its total cost and second, because the problem with EMAs is not their eligibility (they are already means tested) but the deadweight. Targeting would mean identifying which young people would not stay on without the subsidy, but without introducing lie detectors to year eleven classrooms it is very difficult to see how this could be done.
As we learnt from Gordon Brown’s 10 pence tax debacle, it isn’t until a service or payment is actually taken away that people start to protest. While I predict a backlash against the changes in child benefit eligibility, I don’t expect to see much of a fight about EMAs. Working class teenagers lack the resources, skills and allies to make a row. But if you asked me to balance the savings made by a CSR cut with the likelihood of malign social impact, I’m afraid I’m at one with my car load of dismayed footballers.
PS Yesterday I mused briefly about the different approaches of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. The excellent Peter Oborne – who knows ten times as much about these things as me – writes about this today.
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