A poll from University and College Union reveals that 70 per cent of pupils would drop out of college if the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) was withdrawn.
Five weeks after the last protest against plan to axe poor pupils’ EMA grants took place across the UK, hundreds of students gathered once again yesterday. They protested outside Parliament as MP’s voted to scrap the Educational Maintenance Allowance.
The youngsters marched from Piccadilly Circus to Parliament Square in the minutes before MPs voted.
Labour had called for education secretary Michael Gove to reconsider plans to scrap the £ 30-a-week allowance, but it was defeated by 317 votes to 258. The centre-left party had introduced EMAs in 2004 to encourage young people from deprived backgrounds to stay in education and training after the age of 16.
While shadow education secretary Andy Burnham highlighted that the number of students staying in education after the age of 16 has risen from 47 per cent in 1985 to 82 per cent in 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron said the £ 500 million EMA scheme was inefficient and not beneficial to the present economic climate.
The 650,000 teenagers who currently get the grant will continue to receive it for the rest of the academic year, but no new applications are being accepted for the scheme.
These students, who constitute almost half of the pupils in full-time education, could drop out of college by September 2011.
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