youthmoney

There’s little cheer for college students relying on Education Maintenance Allowance. The technical problems that have delayed their payments are to continue. 

The education department says there is no guarantee that young people will get their grants – worth up to £30 a week for 16- to 18-year-olds – this side of Christmas.

According to this Guardian report, nearly 200,000 college students are not being paid because a new software system run by the operating company Liberata has failed. 

The government has apparently described the payments as “incentives”, suggesting that no one should be in serious hardship because they have not received their cash. 

That is arguable. Why are they called maintenance allowances, not incentive allowances, then? 

Whatever you call them, their point was to enable some of the country’s worst-off young people to stay in education. A payment of £30 a week may be merely an incentive to a minister, but it can make that crucial difference to a young person. 

In any case it is missing the point to talk only in terms of serious hardship. If some students don’t get their allowance, they will have to leave the course and get a low-paid, casual or otherwise dead-end job. 

That is exactly what the allowance was meant to discourage.