Education maintenance allowances

A hand-up, not a handset

Better prospects might keep

youngsters in school more

effectively than bribes

Jan 20th 2011 

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At least he can spell

SHORT of simply forcing them to remain in education, how should young people be encouraged to better themselves? One idea, implemented by the previous Labour government in 2004, was to introduce an “education maintenance allowance”, which paid up to £30 a week for college attendance to 16-18-year-olds from families with an annual income of £30,810 or less. The money was supposed to persuade parents who would otherwise push their offspring into low-paid manual work to direct them into training instead.
Yet a study commissioned by the previous government and published just before last year’s election found that only 12% of the teenagers receiving the allowance said they would not be able to attend college without it. That was seized on by the incoming education secretary, Michael Gove, who is abolishing the allowance in England (but not in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland). On January 19th, in the latest bout of youthful anti-austerity demonstrations, students across England protested against the decision as MPs debated it.
Some 650,000 teenagers—almost half of all youngsters in post-compulsory education—claim the allowance. The money was supposed to be spent on bus fares, books and the like, but some recipients have frittered it away on fripperies such as make-up and mobile phones. Reports of ne’er-do-wells showing up to claim the allowance but skipping classes were given credence by the fact that the money was handed out whether or not the recipient also had a part-time job.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, nevertheless reckons that channelling £560m a year into poor families in this way was worthwhile. It calculated that the money wasted on the 88% of recipients who would have attended college anyway was outweighed by the savings made (in welfare benefits) on the 12% who wouldn’t have.
Mr Gove says he will better focus the limited funds available on the particularly needy. But he thinks the best way to boost young people’s prospects is to increase the proportion of pupils who leave school with five good GCSE exam passes in traditional subjects. Just 16% of children achieved that last year. A well-educated population with an improved outlook would not need bribes to better itself, he reckons.
The Economist