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fewer kids from poorer families staying on in education, more students failing to attend lectures (EMA payments get withdrawn if students miss classes) and a rise in the crime rate.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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Comments
16 Comments on OMG CSR EMA RIP
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anj on
Sat, 23rd Oct 2010 11:19 am
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Nick on
Sat, 23rd Oct 2010 2:39 pm
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mas on
Sun, 24th Oct 2010 11:53 am
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oldandrew on
Sun, 24th Oct 2010 1:04 pm
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Mas on
Sun, 24th Oct 2010 2:27 pm
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oldandrew on
Sun, 24th Oct 2010 2:46 pm
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Mas on
Sun, 24th Oct 2010 4:36 pm
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Michael on
Mon, 25th Oct 2010 1:40 pm
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Matthew Taylor on
Tue, 26th Oct 2010 10:15 am
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oldandrew on
Tue, 26th Oct 2010 10:33 am
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Matthew Taylor on
Tue, 26th Oct 2010 10:48 am
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mas on
Tue, 26th Oct 2010 11:50 am
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oldandrew on
Tue, 26th Oct 2010 12:10 pm
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Have Sixth-Formers Changed? « Scenes From The Battleground on
Tue, 9th Nov 2010 6:36 pm
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ContentedLibDem on
Sun, 21st Nov 2010 11:44 pm
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oldandrew on
Sat, 18th Dec 2010 7:48 am
Don’t tempt them on the lie detector thing. Some authorities already do it for housing benefit claims!
Matthew,
Two elements of the austerity package you have particularly bemoaned, and which I share your disappointment on, are the removal of the EMA and the Child Trust Fund and I wonder if there is a similarity between them that might be worth noting.
I’m struggling to articulate this but essentially it comes down to this. This government’s budgetary choices seem to suggest that the thing they most distrust is not government and its services but what they see as handouts. No service is being provided by the EMA and the Child Trust Fund- they are direct transfers to help people at significant points in their life.
They’re not going to create a culture of dependency because they’re clearly finite and with conditions attached. But they are nakedly redistributive while the services that are, relatively speaking, being protected are less obviously aimed solely at the underprivileged.
Now this preferences for maintaining services over transfers, see welfare bill as well, is probably in part motivated as much by a desperate fear of creating too many job losses as particular ideology. But I do feel, especially when they get rid of the smarter transfers, it does a good job of highlighting the clash between Osbourne and Cameron on the big society.
A situation where services are maintained, relatively, but the poor are struggling far more than before to make ends strikes me as one in which people become more reliant on the state and there is far less space for the big society to grow. I agree with Cameron that society exists and is different from the state. I just think Osbourne’s budget has actually stacked things more in the state’s favour than society’s.
The first I ever heard of the EMA was some young women discussing it a few years ago as their funding for anything but educational matters. Free travel on public transport seems a more obvious better support and use of existing resources and is also an issue that some youth groups have been campaigning on for some time.
The child trust fund was ‘nice’, but it always felt that it would really be of more benefit to those that could afford to put in higher regular payments than it was to those who couldn’t. Ultimately it wasn’t the poorest that stood to gain most from it.
The most pressing question of all I think is what is it that we are educating our children for? What are the industries we want them to become skilled in that will generate wealth in the country? We knew there would be cuts. We can bemoan the short sightedness of allowing youth services to die. We can shake our heads at the arrogance and naiveté that youth services aren’t necessary because investment is being made into a ‘good education’. But what is it that that good education is educating children and young people for? Being able to quote fine literary passages and debate highlights of our history may make for fascinating dinner parties, but they won’t pay for the food. Forcing young peole to be good citizens for a few weeks during summer schemes may keep some occupied for a short time, but what then is their role in helping towards prosperity? There seems to be a lot of rallying calls, but no clear destination.
There were a few down sides to EMA.
Firstly, by being paid for attendance in lessons it gave students the impression that even at A-level then it was enough simply to turn up. For students who had attended poor secondary schools and had passed dumbed-down GCSEs without ever having done any homework or revision in their own time this was often lethal.
Secondly, by putting money in the hands of those students who were eligible, it made it more normal for 16-18 year olds to have greater financial autonomy from their parents. It became far more common for students to have, not just Saturday jobs, but Saturday, Sunday and after school jobs which served to distract them further from studying.
Thirdly, it helped fill up worthless vocational courses that nobody would have wanted to do if they weren’t being paid. In some schools staying on in the sixth form was what you did if you weren’t very bright.
I don’t know that any of this justifies abolishing it, but it’s hard not to wonder if there might have been more effective ways to use the money.
” In some schools staying on in the sixth form was what you did if you weren’t very bright.”
Ironically the same can be said for some going on to do PGCE’s. Education for educations sake becomes a cycle of kids led by educators whose main motivation is to remain within educations protective bubble.
My point is that it wasn’t education for education’s sake, it was not education and it was for the sake of getting the EMA.
Yes and I was expanding on it. Just the same as the kids who attend lessons for financial gain so there are university students who effectively do the same.
In terms of education for educations sake I wasn’t meaning the motivation of students, I was referring to the motivation of those who provided the incentive.
On George Osborne, interesting to see that Martin Kettle at the Guardian disagrees completely with the Peter Oborne article that you reference. Kettle says:
“…When Osborne says he did not come into politics to cut the public services, the record supports him. When he says that he wants to protect the health service, schools, overseas aid and infrastructural projects because these are the things that matter most to most people, here too the facts are broadly on his side….
…the charge that this is an ideologically focused Thatcher 2.0 government does not stack up. A Thatcherite would emphatically want to cut the public services, not protect them; would ringfence defence and law and order rather than health and education; and would make personal tax cuts a central priority in any deficit strategy. But that is not Osborne’s or David Cameron’s agenda.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/21/osborne-message-before-facts
Thanks for these comments.
Michael thanks for the link. I usually agree with Martin K so that has given me pause for thought. Nick, very interesting analysis and something I will ponder on further.
It looks as though EMAs are somewhat unloved by grown-ups! I am not sure why OldAndrew thinks giving teenagers a small allowances makes it more likely they will take up part time jobs. For the kind of kids I am talking about remaining financially dependent isn’t really an option . Their parent/s don’t have the funds to pay for basic – like their travel to and from college. A
Anyway, thanks for the comments and I return to this theme in today’s blog.
Nick,
“I am not sure why OldAndrew thinks giving teenagers a small allowances makes it more likely they will take up part time jobs.”
I didn’t say that it is the students who receive the EMA who take the part time jobs.
My experience is that there has been a cultural change among sixth formers, towards greater financial autonomy. I do wonder if the EMA being paid to some students (and not to their parents) helped prompt that wider change in culture.
Thanks Andrew. Isn’t the simple explanation that participation rates post 16 have risen among the least well-off. So there are simply more young people who have to earn money to support their studies?
Maybe it’s just because the College I attended didn’t have many rich kids (they stayed at the grammar schools), but wasn’t it always normal for 16-18 year olds to have jobs too? I’d have never been able to use my fake ID without cash to spend on cider, oh and erm text books
My experience is of teaching a course and subject where participation rates haven’t risen that greatly and the culture had still changed. Perhaps I overstated it in my original comment as I don’t think the EMA is a complete explanation for the change in culture (wider participation and the increase in less challenging courses with less time comittments no doubt also played a role) but I think it deserves to be considered as a possible factor.
Possible I am being overly speculative, I don’t think that the EMA should have been abolished, but your blog post got me thinking about the policy and what I have seen of its effects. I do wonder if there would have been ways to use the money more effectively. During the Labour leadership election, Andy Burnham suggested students should be given the choice of whether they want EMA or a free bus pass. I do wonder whether that would have been more effective. A number of other possibilities occur to me and I should probably blog about it rather than rambling on about it here.
EMA has had a terrible effect on the way students perceive education. It’s encouraged presenteeism and suggests that nothing is worthwhile unless money is attached to it. The idea of being incentivised to learn because you love learning has gone out of the window. If you look at the comments on the Save EMA website you will see this. You’ll also see that there is incredible waste – pupils freely admit to spending the money on cars and apple macs. I have blogged about it several times here: http://contentedlibdem.blogspot.com/search/label/EMA
Probably worth adding a couple of links to this discussion:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/17/students-ema-bribe-necessity
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