Why the Government should stop wasting our money

It is every man (and, so as not to be unnecessarily sexist woman’s) dream to win the lottery. They dream of having the multi-million pound payout to spend on lavish adventures and glorious luxuries. If they were to miraculously overcome the 1 in 13,983,816 chance of hitting the jackpot, you would not have any idea of what to do with such a vast amount of money.

Consider, then, that you are the Education Minister, and you have a spare £570 million to spend in your Department’s budget. Which worthwhile enterprise within the Department for Education and Skills would you invest it in? Now, I don’t parade as mind reader, but I am willing to bet that you wouldn’t invest that money in the tobacco and alcohol industries, would you?

So why is it, then, that the Department for Education and skills more than doubled its funding for the so-called “Educational Maintenance Allowance” from £260 million, in the 2004/05 academic year, to £570 million, in the 2006/07 academic year? And that figure is set to rise as £598 million is set aside for this ridiculous scheme in two years time, although it has levelled off before it reached £600 million.

I approached my local Member of Parliament last October and asked him why the Government saw fit to continue the scheme, and I received a reply, worded in bad grammar, from one of his Westminster employees, masquerading for the sake of the letter as Paul Clark himself. In no uncertain terms, this letter told me what I had already feared, that the scheme unfairly distributes money amongst people in lower socio-economic groups.

Before I continue, I am likely to have many of you screaming at me that, as they are from lower income families, they deserve money to assist with funding the cost of continuing with education past the age of 16. I agree with you. It is important that we equip ourselves with youngsters who are able to fight with their academic skills in order to better the productive capabilities of our future workforce.

However, I know that the money is not always finding it way into the education system or public transport. Moreover, the honest taxpayers of this Country are unknowingly channelling their funds into providing alcohol, tobacco products and other forms of legal, and even in some cases illegal, entertainment and consumption.

I have a friend who is nearly 19 years-old (for the purposes of this case study I shall refer to him as Gary) and has been getting EMA since he started two two-year A-level courses at college. This highlights my first point. Gary was supposed to have completed his A-level courses and be amongst the ranks of officers within the RAF by now. After all, one of EMAs primary goals was, and still is, to encourage these people from lower socio-economic groups to learn and do the best that they can.

This didn’t happen with Gary. He could not be motivated by the immensely over-priced monetary incentive and, after two years, achieved nothing more than a U in Chemistry and Physics. This was not only a failure for Gary (as, with the right incentive he could have achieved at least a C), but also a failure for EMA, as it failed to motivate a student who could have been fairly successful.

So while Gary now carries on into his third year at college, doing a BTEC in Applied Science, the State is forced to continue to pay money into his bank account. Since September 2004, he has received £30 per week, plus £100 bonuses twice a year for supposed progress, plus a further £100 after an administrative error channelled a double-payout into his bulging bank account.

But it wasn’t bulging. Gary was spending money every week, without fail, on various little “niceties”. These ranged from driving lessons (and then insurance and petrol once he got his car) to CDs, DVDs, games and frequent trips to the local RAFA club for a couple of pints. So who benefited most from Gary’s EMA money? The entertainment industry, insurance company and, worst of all, alcohol industry all got a sizeable chunk of Government expenditure through Gary and hundreds of thousands of people across the Country in a similar position.

So what can be done to ensure that the money is going towards their education rather than entertainment? Well, for a start, the EMA scheme, which marginalises the population of which it pays out to, should be scrapped immediately. Instead, it should be replaced by a fairer system, which provides all students who take the bus to school with a free bus pass. A system which provides all students with free textbooks, which would be a single, substantially smaller payout at the beginning of the year.

But most importantly, we should replace it with a system which does not destroy the ability for our future leaders to be provided with money to recklessly spend on useless commodities in another of the Government’s useless target-setting agendas, which are collectively destroying our academic and professional achievements because it looks good in league tables and does not discriminate against those who are naturally less talented academically.

Above all, though, we must not degrade our students with financial gains as an incentive to perform well and continue on to university to participate in whichever course of Film Studies with Childcare they wish to do.

The greatest incentive to learn has always been, and should always be, true academic success. And it will be the Labour Government’s greatest failure if the hypothetical carrot of true success is sold for money.