Living the high life

So to speak. I can't really fathom that it's just two lessons until I leave the relative safety of secondary school, although I don't want to dwell on that too much, having already written on the matter. What I want to write about is this: do people deserve EMA for just fitting into a set bracket of parental income?

Whilst the Conservative party do want to cut it, and have already cut the £100 bonus payments, there is still the debate on whether students should receive it at all. To clear any misconceptions ahead of time, I will not be receiving EMA when I go to college, as my household income is too great.

I suppose the question is about what the money goes on. I believe the vast majority of the money goes on alcohol, clothes, and other recreational items that have no necessary link to learning. An argument for it is that those who do not receive EMA would receive this money from their parents anyway, but I can tell you, I get very little from my parents, and certainly wouldn't get any if I wanted to go out and get drunk (not that I'm complaining - I don't drink anyway).

However, if the money given is put to good use, for instance, is spent on items that aid with learning, or helps an unemployed, or low wage parent get by on frankly inadequate jobseeker's and children allowances. This, I believe, however, is comparatively rare.

There is also the argument that EMA keeps certain children in education, who would have otherwise gone straight into work, with no financial incentive to continue. Whilst this is a great thing in theory, there are two flaws. Firstly (and this is just a presumption), many of these people may drop out of college, seeing that further education is not for them, before obtaining any qualifications or useful skills, thus the money that has gone into this is wasted. Secondly, all this is based on a presumption that more skilled workers are what we need in Britain - whilst that may certainly be true at the moment, can we really foresee what's going to happen in a generation's time?

To conclude, I believe that these problems can be solved by changing the terms of EMA, and making it into a contract with some return obligations. The first of these obligations could make abuse of the system by dropping out early a lot harder - EMA would be turned into a loan, and only upon completion of a full two years of further education would all debts be dropped - if the student was to drop out early, he or she would have to repay the amount received in EMA up to that point.

Secondly, students would have to be able to prove that the EMA that they were receiving was used wisely and appropriately - a certain allowance would have to be made, of course, but by way of receipts and the like, they would have to show that the full £30 was not going on booze. This could cut uptake of further education, but as I mentioned earlier, it is debatable whether this is a problem or not.

Thirdly, and finally, students would have to prove that their parents' income was actually the specified amount, which would both help to avoid EMA fraud, and help with people fiddling their income on their HMRC tax forms.

I don't think that EMA is a bad thing; indeed, I can see its many benefits; however, I do just think that it needs to be regulated more carefully than it is at the present time. As always, comments would be appreciated, especially if there are any glaring flaws in my argument that I've missed out!