Financial support for 16 to 19 year olds in education or training

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1 Office of the Children s Commissioner s response to the Department for Education consultation: Financial support for 16 to 19 year olds in education or training May 2011

2 Office of the Children s Commissioner The Office of the Children s Commissioner is a national organisation led by the Children s Commissioner for England, Dr Maggie Atkinson. The post of Children s Commissioner for England was established by the Children Act The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) underpins and frames all of our work. The Children s Commissioner has a duty to promote the views and interests of all children in England, in particular those whose voices are least likely to be heard, to the people who make decisions about their lives. She also has a duty to speak on behalf of all children in the UK on non-devolved issues which include immigration, for the whole of the UK, and youth justice, for England and Wales. One of the Children s Commissioner s key functions is encouraging organisations that provide services for children always to operate from the child s perspective. Under the Children Act 2004 the Children s Commissioner is required both to publish what she finds from talking and listening to children and young people, and to draw national policymakers and agencies attention to the particular circumstances of a child or small group of children which should inform both policy and practice. The Office of the Children s Commissioner has a statutory duty to highlight where we believe vulnerable children are not being treated appropriately in accordance with duties established under international and domestic legislation. May

3 Response to Financial support for 16 to 19 year olds in education or training The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child This year is the 20 th anniversary of the UK s ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), in This is the most widely ratified international human rights treaty, setting out what all children and young people need to be happy and healthy. While the Convention is not incorporated into national law, it still has the status of a binding international treaty. By agreeing to the UNCRC the Government has committed itself to promoting and protecting children s rights by all means available to it. The legislation governing the operation of the Office of the Children s Commissioner requires us to have regard to the Convention in all our activities. Following an independent review of our office in 2010 we are working to promote and protect children s rights in the spirit of the recommendations made in the Dunford report and accepted by the Secretary of State. In relation to the current consultation, the articles of the Convention which are most relevant to this area of policy are: Article 2: Article 3: Article 4: Article 28: Article 29: All rights apply to all children, whatever their circumstances The best interests of the child must be a top priority in all actions concerning children Governments have a responsibility to protect the rights of children Every child has the right to an education Discipline in schools must respect children s human dignity Education should develop each child s personality, talents and abilities to the fullest. The response below has therefore been drafted with these articles in mind. We do not propose to respond separately to every consultation question. Rather, we will respond where we feel the UNCRC gives us a locus to do so, and where our existing evidence base informs our conclusions. Throughout, we use the same section headings as in the consultation document. 1 You can view the full text of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights website at: A summary version, produced by UNICEF, is available at: May

4 Summary: key advice and recommendations The challenge for replacing the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) is to reduce the high deadweight cost of EMA, while at the same time retaining the elements of the scheme which encouraged so many young people to remain in education and training. If this balance is not achieved, then it is likely that the removal of EMA will result in an increase in those not in Education, Employment or Training (NEETs). Any evaluation of the proposed scheme should use this as the main criterion for success. Government must ensure that young people are aware of the support available to them, and that the reduction in support available does not send a message that staying in education or training has in some way become less valuable. We support the Government s decision to use this consultation to elicit the views of young people. We would welcome a commitment from Government that, in line with Article 12 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, this should be the case for all future consultations which affect children and young people. We welcome the identification of care leavers and those in receipt of income support as being of high priority for continued assistance, and would support the provision of a guaranteed bursary for these individuals. Receipt of this bursary must not adversely affect their eligibility for other benefits, or for the future Universal Credit. We support the proposal to devolve discretion around payments to individual schools and colleges, and consider that the proposed principles for allocation are fair and proportionate. Guidance should make clear that there is an expectation that institutions pay bursaries in cash, rather than kind. In most cases, young people will know best what they need and should be trusted to address these needs. Payment in kind should only be allowed following meaningful consultation with the young people eligible for the payment. We support the rationale behind the proposals for distributing funds to colleges and training providers. The proposed review should take into account the impact on eligibility for Free School Meals of the new Universal Credit. It should also be carried out in cooperation with local authorities, to ensure that the national distribution of children leaving care is taken into account. May

5 Full response to Financial support for 16 to 19 year olds in education or training Background and context We acknowledge that the evaluations which have taken place of Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) 2 show it has had only a limited affect on young people s decisions over whether to remain in education and training. Around half of young people surveyed as part of the evaluation said that eligibility for EMA played no part in their decision. It is clear, therefore, that there was a considerable deadweight cost associated with this programme. Further, we recognise that in the current financial climate, with pressures on budgets throughout Government, there is a need to reduce expenditure on a number of programmes, and that eliminating deadweight costs, where they exist, is one way of doing this without materially affecting service users. However, there are important ways in which the EMA programme was a considerable success, and these should be retained in the replacement system. The same evaluation found that it raised participation by around six percentage points. While in percentage terms this appears low, in fact 6% of the overall cohort represents around 36,000 young people per year who were enabled to remain in education or training by EMA. That is around half of the population of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEETs). 3 Given the strong association between NEETs and a range of negative life outcomes, reducing the number by this proportion is a very positive outcome. Moreover, it is highly likely to save Government substantially more than it costs in the long term through savings to benefits, criminal justice and other budgets. In the context of a replacement system, which has considerably less resource attached, the challenge for Government is therefore to reduce the associated deadweight cost, while at the same time retaining the elements of the scheme which encouraged so many young people to remain in education. If this balance is not achieved, then the removal of EMA may result in an increase in the population of NEETs. Any evaluation of the replacement scheme should use this as the main criterion for success. Separately, we consider that there is an important role for Government in communicating the changes to policy. Firstly, it will be important to manage expectations of support among students. The budget for support will reduce from the 490m spent on EMA in 2008 to 180m following the end of the proposed transitional arrangements. This will mean that many fewer young people will receive help, and (with the exception of the relatively small number who will receive the 1200 bursary) those eligible for financial support will generally receive less. Government s role in this will be to ensure that young people are aware of the support available to them, and also to ensure that the reduction in support available does not become translated into a message that staying in education or training has in some way become less valuable May

6 We support the Government s decision to encourage through this consultation the views of young people affected by the changes to financial support. We would welcome a commitment from Government that, in line with Article 12 of the UNCRC, this should be the case for all future consultations which affect children and young people. Eligibility for guaranteed bursary and underpinning principles for fund We welcome the identification of care leavers and those in receipt of income support as being of high priority for continued assistance, and would support the provision of a guaranteed bursary for these individuals. It is important also to ensure that the receipt of this bursary does not adversely affect their eligibility for other benefits, or for the future Universal Credit. This funding should be additional to other existing benefits to ensure that it truly incentivises continued participation. The young people concerned should receive a clear statement to this effect. We would recommend that this section of the new system be administered separately ideally through local authorities in the context of their general responsibility for care leavers. With regard to the broader principles of the fund, we would support the proposal to devolve discretion around payments to individual schools and colleges, as they are in a better position than central Government to assess local need. We agree that the proposed principles: targeting greatest need; conditionality on attendance and behaviour; and prorata payments for shorter courses, are appropriate and proportionate. Our one reservation is that guidance should make clear what constitutes acceptable attendance and behaviour on a national basis, as a way of ensuring equity of approach between institutions. Schools or colleges should not be able to set unrealistically high standards as a way of informally excluding difficult low income students. We acknowledge the concerns set out in the Equality Impact Assessment of these proposals 4 that devolution of responsibility for the scheme may lead to scope for unintentional discrimination in allocations by institutions. However, we feel that this can be addressed by clear guidance from Department for Education (DfE) around what constitutes fair allocation criteria. In addition, most awarding institutions will be subject to the same equality requirements as central Government, so will have their own processes in place for addressing these issues. The exception will be academies, where their funding agreements with the DfE should already reflect these requirements, or should be amended to do so. Similarly, we believe that guidance should make clear that there is an expectation institutions pay bursaries in cash, rather than kind. We recognise that, in some limited contexts, payment in kind may be a sensible approach to local barriers to participation. For example, it may be extremely helpful for a college to lay on a bus for areas where there is no public transport available for students. However, in most cases, the young people themselves will know best how to address their own issues, and should be enabled and 4 ment.pdf May

7 trusted to do so. Payment in kind should only be allowed following meaningful consultation with the young people who are eligible for the payment. Transitional arrangements Our only recommendation on the proposed transitional arrangements is that Government should honour existing commitments made to young people at the beginning of their courses. These commitments should be honoured whether they were explicit or implicit, and whether they were made by the current or previous Government. The key determinant should be whether the young people concerned had a reasonable belief that support would continue at a particular level for the length of their course. It is this belief that will have influenced their decision to continue in education or training. Methodology for allocating funding to colleges and training providers We support the rationale behind the proposals for distributing funds to colleges and training providers. We believe that any of the three proposed methodologies will be a reasonably equitable way of allocating funding, and appreciate that they each have particular strengths and weaknesses particularly with regard to administrative costs. We agree that, while using data on current EMA distribution may be effective initially, it will quickly become out of date, and should therefore be reviewed in the first year of operation. We would propose that this review should take into account the effect on eligibility for Free School Meals of the new Universal Credit. It should also be carried out in cooperation with local authorities, to ensure that the national distribution of children leaving care is taken into account when allocating funds. For more information, contact: John Connolly, Principal Policy Advisor - Education john.connolly@childrenscommissioner.gsi.gov.uk May