'Three in four' grants not paid

By Hannah Richardson BBC News education reporter

The Educational Maintenance Allowance is worth up to �30 a week

Up to three-quarters of England's poorest students are still without the allowance designed to keep them in education, college principals estimate.

Association of Colleges president David Collins claimed only 25 to 30% of those who had applied for the Education Maintenance Allowance had received it.

Administration problems at private firm Liberata have delayed the EMA grants.

The Learning and Skills Council has said it is taking steps to prevent financial hardship for students.

Education grants for adult learners and young parents are now also reported to be hit by the problems. But the LSC has denied this.

If these were university students who were not getting their grants there would be marching in the streets Sara Mogel Principal of West Cheshire College

Liberata took over an �80m six-year contract to run the EMA, the Adult Learning Grant and the Care to Learn scheme in July 2007.

Students who qualify for these grants are those on low incomes trying to improve their basic skills by taking qualifications such as BTECs, NVQs, GCSEs and A-levels.

Like those on EMA, they can get up to �30 a week, depending on their family income, to enable them to study.

The government has pledged to massively increase the basic skills of adults in England to make the country more competitive in the modern global economy.

AOC president Mr Collins said he had surveyed college principals prior to an emergency meeting with the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) late last week.

"The disappointment is that the situation is not a great deal better than it was a month ago."

He said at one college in Waltham Forest only 164 students had received their grants, compared to the 1,500 who qualified last year.

"Some colleges have reported that 50% of students have received their EMA, but the average seems to be about 25 to 30%.

"In some ways this is a worse problem than the problems with Sats, because the Sats do not affect careers or staying on in college."

The estimate from the Department for Children, Schools and Families of how many would apply this year has been just over 600,000.

Others deprived

Representatives of the AOC met officials at the Department for Children, Schools and Families on Monday to discuss the issue and a panel is being set up to oversee the problems.

Mr Collins said students and their families had been managing to scrape by in the past few weeks, but that hardship was increasing as time went on.

He added: "By the end of October students will be dropping out. We are now getting worried parents coming in saying; 'How are we going to cope?'"

The LSC has given colleges the right to use cash from their usually ring-fenced Learner Support Funds to help students facing money worries.

But no extra money has been made available and any payments to students are coming out of colleges existing budgets.

Principal of West Cheshire College Sara Mogel said if she had taken money from the college's Learner Support Fund it would deprive other vulnerable students.

"The biggest call on the Learner Support Fund is for childcare. Using this money will just harm another cohort of students."

"So what we have done is we are paying hardship money students from our own funds, otherwise we would be taking it from someone else who needs it."

However, college principals will have to try to get the money they pay out back from students themselves once they are in receipt of their EMAs.

Disadvantaged

This is because the EMA is paid directly to the student, usually a week in arrears.

Mrs Mogel said: "If I am paying an emergency sum of �10 to a student for 10 weeks in the end they will owe me �100.

"I am not going to pursue that because it would not be worth it and is not a good relationship to have with a student."

She added: "If these were university students who were not getting their grants there would be marching in the streets.

"These are the poorest most disadvantaged students who are getting hit."

Shadow Children's Secretary Michael Gove said: "After the disaster of the Sats fiasco earlier this summer the chaos surrounding the delivery of this year's EMAs is yet another example of the government's failure to administer a large-scale project.

"We were told weeks ago that the problems would be sorted soon but thousands of students still have not received the money they are eligible for.

"Ministers need to explain what is going wrong and apologise to those students that are affected."

The National Union of Students said it was unacceptable that there was still so much confusion around the EMA situation and that "colleges are being forced into robbing Peter to pay Paul".

It urged the LSC to write to all students, apologising for the situation and making it clear how they can access interim support.

"Now that Liberata has been fined for its part in this shambles, then that money must be reinvested into Learner Support Funds for students this year to ensure the money reaches those who have been worst affected," its vice president for further education Beth Walker said.

Here is a selection of your experiences:

I have applied for EMA and have filled all the EMA forms out and got them signed by my tutors but have not received a penny. I need the money to get to college and back and I can't keep afford it for much longer.
Craig Morton, Telford

Should the government not have started to solve the problem a month ago instead of now? It's great to say that we are going to discuss this but really they actually need to do some action. I should be getting �30 a week but I haven't heard anything from EMA since sending off the application. Liberta have no contact details on their website/what's going on with EMA. Not many people in my school are getting the money they deserve and some people have had to drop out of school as they can't afford to keep in school. Why isn't the government doing something?
Alex, Cumbria

Every one who needs to be provided with EMA should be. Otherwise there will be drop outs all over the country as people can't keep up. The money is needed for people to get to college or school and to eat while they are there, if they don't get EMA soon many families will have problems sending their children into higher education.
Poofus, Colne

I discovered today that EMA won't be paying me until the 20th of August. I've had to go without the past few weeks and borrow small change from my mother who is very hard up for money at the moment. Due to "administrative errors" no A-level students at my college will receive their money until the 20th, and others who expected their money today will also have it delayed by a few days due to another error. I applied for EMA for this year (my second year of A-levels) back in June - and had my notification that I'd been approved in early august - so naturally I expected my payments to begin almost immediately... perhaps I shouldn't have been so optimistic.
Alex, Cardiff

As Head of Sixth Form and the person responsible for processing payments in my school, I can confirm that very few of my students (less than twenty out of eighty) in a school in one of the most deprived parts of the UK have received their EMA contracts. Calls to Liberata have gone unanswered and call handlers have been unknowledgeable and largely unhelpful. Students have been given wrong information and have been repeatedly fobbed off. Whilst we haven't lost any students yet I can see that there may be issues just around the corner. It is an absolute disgrace.
Lisa, Gillingham, Kent

EMA is monumentally unfair, it should not be means tested there should be another manner of testing as i live in a single parent family who earns over the limit so i do not receive EMA but i don't get 30 pounds a week of my mum as she cant afford it yet children from families with both parents who decide not to work because there lazy or one stays at home get 30 pounds a week which is far more than they need anyway, most people who get EMA don't even spend it on education they spend it on alcohol an booze. its as though peoples children are punished for them working an trying hard in education when they were young. Either EMA should become universal or none should be given at all with the exception of families who cant work because of illness or disability.
David Taylor, Burnley

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