Education Maintenance Allowances should continue to be targeted at students most in need

Students from low income families should remain at the centre of the Welsh Government’s Education Maintenance Allowance scheme.

That’s the view of a cross-party committee of Assembly Members after looking into a petition from Holywell student, Catrin Anne Davies.

She sent a petition to the National Assembly for Wales calling for the Education Maintenance Allowance to be based on individual student, rather than parental household incomes.

And although members of the Assembly’s Enterprise and Learning Committee sympathised with the petitioner’s argument, they felt that such a change would mean that already limited resources would have to be spread more thinly.

“We have great sympathy for the petitioner’s personal circumstances and applaud her positive attempts to change the system and get her voice heard by petitioning the National Assembly,” said Committee Chair, Gareth Jones AM.

“Yet we also acknowledge that, given the limited resources available, the Education Maintenance Allowance should be focused on those students who come from the lowest income households.

“We do not therefore support the call for the allowance to be spread thinly across the board but targeted effectively where it can make the greatest difference.”

Committee members also predict that the current economic downturn will put additional demands on the system, so they want the Welsh Government to ensure sufficient resources are made available to deal with this.

And members also want a review of the impact of the Education Maintenance Allowance on educational performance because they feel that the system has not been properly monitored.

Other recommendations from the Committee include:

• anomalies in the calculation of household income should be addressed in order to remove any unfairness.

• unacceptable delays in Education Maintenance Allowance payments should not happen again and systems should be in place to ensure that students’ studies are never put in jeopardy as a result of administrative failure.