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Saturday 22 January 2011

Did you know that Labour were committed to scrapping the EMA (Educational Maintenace Allowance)

You'd be hard pressed to guess it given all the heat generated by Labour about how the government's plans to replace the EMA with different support for 16-18 year olds. But here, from 2007 and being passed around on Twitter and Facebook today, is what Labour was planning to do:
An incentive scheme that rewards 16- to 18-year-olds for staying in education post-16 will be abolished when the leaving age is increased to 18.
The Secretary of State for Education said last week that education maintenance allowances (EMAs) would no longer be necessary when the age is raised in 2015.
Giving evidence to the Education and Skills Select Committee inquiry into 14-19 education, Alan Johnson said: "The EMA is there as an incentive to stay on. We will not need to incentivise after 2015."
Not that anyone who gets their news from  the BBC would know this a they have a pro-Labour narrative to spread.

Many thanks to Mark Pack for the spot.

2 comments:

Grant said...

Are the Tories and Lib Dems aware of this ?
If not , what the hell do all their "advisors" do ?

riddler said...

Agreed about EMA, although it does beg the question should we be increasing the school leaving age to 18? I suppose, if I were cynical, it'll help with the youth unemployment figures.