Axing EMA is ‘counter-productive’ say students

EMA is personally important to me for many reasons. EMA is the reason that I had 100 per cent attendance last year.

Many times I felt under the weather but dragged myself into school, as I knew I would be rewarded.

I receive £30 a week, and essentially, this means I don’t have to ask my mum for money, ever.

EMA keeps me in college, working hard for a brighter future for myself and those around me.

This helps improve my whole family’s quality of life, meaning that rather than riding the poverty line we are comfortable.

If I need a book for English, if there’s a trip and even buying lunch every day, I can fund it with my EMA.

Of course I spend it on things that aren’t directly educational such as clothes and going out with friends.

(Students protest in London about plans to increase tuition fees and scrap EMA – Getty)

But without this money, I wouldn’t be able to do the things friends from wealthier backgrounds do.

For me this is very important, as to create a division is to create hostility, which has certainly been evident in recent times. So much for ‘Big Society’.

EMA keeps me in college, working hard for a brighter future for myself and those around me.

With it I have a strong hope of going to university and don’t have to find a job, which are scarce regardless.

For a government focused on a ‘Broken Britain’… to choose to remove EMA is counter-productive to say the least.

It will be a different story for my little sister however.

In two years she will reach the age where she decides what to do after her GCSEs. If EMA is cut, she will have little choice.

She will most definitely have to be looking for a job, full or part time, either to drop out and start her working life or in order to keep her in college. For me this is outrageous.

EMA is proven to have done what it set out to do, and for a government focused on a ‘Broken Britain’ in which ‘youths’ hang around on street corners, to choose to remove EMA is counter-productive to say the least.

In cutting EMA and increasing tuition fees the government are effectively removing any hope, or making life extremely difficult, for anyone from a low-income background to make a good life for themselves.

So far the cuts have been entirely aimed at the less affluent, and this is completely unfair, deconstructive and un-progressive. David Cameron, Nick Clegg – shame on you, you are obliterating the hopes of a generation of good honest young people.