Promise over learning allowances

Learners are being promised payments will be backdated in full

Students in England awaiting Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) payments are being assured they should receive them in full within weeks.

The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) says thousands of EMA applications are still being processed as they come in.

It says the operation of the system under new contractor Capita means these can be handled comfortably within the three-week turnaround target time.

But an LSC director cast fresh doubt on figures presented to Parliament.

On 19 November Schools Minister Jim Knight said there were 12,016 applications "in the process of being finalised".

A few days later he had to say a full count of outstanding applications had revealed there were "around 26,000".

Entitlements

Mr Knight also wrote to the LSC's chief executive, Mark Haysom, to express his department's concern about the "work in progress" figures the LSC had been supplying ministers from its previous contractor, Liberata.

But now the LSC's director of young people's support programmes, Ian Pursglove, said of the 26,000: "I'm not sure of the exact provenance of that figure."

He told the BBC News website he assumed it had referred to what he called "work in progress" or what some described as the "backlog" of applications.

As applications for EMAs arrive they are processed and a "notice of entitlement" is issued.

A learner takes this notice to their college and that triggers the actual payments of £10, £20 or £30 a week, depending on family income.

Mr Pursglove said that as of 18 November there had indeed been 12,016 "work in progress" applications.

"We are processing enough that we have a three-week turnaround time built in," he said.

"Twelve thousand is comfortably within a week's work."

Confident

A spokesman for the LSC gave the total in receipt of EMA payments so far this year as 461,000.

What perhaps confuses the issue is that new applications can and do arrive throughout the academic year.

Mr Pursglove said: "We have an aim of 500,000 learners within this academic year and I am confident we will get that."

He said that if a learner had yet to hear from the LSC about their application they should contact the EMA helpline.

The helpline had been notorious for its inefficiency this autumn but now, he said, had improved considerably.

Payments would be backdated to include all those to which students' learning providers said they were entitled.

Another issue raised in e-mails to the BBC is that supporting financial documents people have sent in to support their EMA applications have not been returned.

Mr Pursglove said: "As part of the work Capita have done when they have taken over, what they have discovered is there has been an issue with the sending back of the original documents."

A dedicated team was now tackling this, he said.

Only in England was the handling of EMA applications contracted out to a private company. The system has worked elsewhere in the UK without the problems that have affected England.

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Some of your thoughts on this issue:

Today i received the news that my EMA application has been lost by the company during the switch to the new organization. I was told only a month or so ago that my application was still being processed and that i would start to receive payments shortly. They claim to have no record of me at all, even though i received EMA throughout the whole of last year. I will now have to submit a new application, i do not know whether i will receive any back-payments. LSC have really blown it!
Dickon Moore, Frome

This whole processing is a FARCE. I have sent an original application the last week of September only to have it returned. This has happened three times to date!! The reason being they in the EMA office repeatedly requests for the VERY SAME DOCUMENTS WHICH HAVE BEEN ENCLOSED. They seem to just send letters back because they they cant sort them our due to the situation now.

I believe that this is a tactic used to delay the process and that they should put a decent explainaton in the returned letter rather rather than a ridiculous reason they state. I now dont know what to do with the present returned letter. Very frustrated.
morowa selassie, bristol

It is my first year at college and I havnt recieved my payments yet. I needed this money to buy revision material for my exams in January and now I'm having to borrow money from my friends and family. This is not acceptable and it should be resolved as quickly as possible.
Sakina, Birmingham, West Midlands.

I'm on low income and my son is supposed to get £30 per week. He received nothing till the end of November and then it was only what he was due. He has received nothing since. When we asked what was happening we were told the initial backlog had been dealt with but as this took so long they were now dealing with the next backlog.

Obviously they cannot handle this situation. This is affecting the families that are the worst off in the country. The Government needs to step in and get this sorted out ASAP. Not tomorrow or next week but NOW! Frustrated of Hertfordshire.
Mrs C Dilley, Hertfordshire

It is all very well making promises that applications will be processed, but what nobody seems to be picking up on is that even when thats finished, there are still issues with payments from EMA. They don't arrive on time, if at all. In some respects it is more trouble than it is worth as you can't rely on the money being in your account.
Dannie, Somerset

It is all very well making promises that applications will be processed, but what nobody seems to be picking up on is that even when thats finished, there are still issues with payments from EMA. They don't arrive on time, if at all. In some respects it is more trouble than it is worth as you can't rely on the money being in your account.
Dannie, Somerset

It's nice to know that they are trying their best. I'm sure a couple of weeks of waiting wont hurt.
Fatheha, Bexley, Kent

Total utter rubbish I have been waiting for mine well over 6 weeks with dozens of phone call and still nothing. The whole things is a total shambles!!!
Shafakut Ali, Birmingham

I'm a student in my second year and I, like many had their EMA money come in late. Now, I don't have much money so I take the full amount of £30. However without this money I cannot travel to and from college. So I loaned £200 getting to college and missed many days a week trying to save money in hope that EMA will come soon.

So, I finally received my EMA earlier this month but I only got £90. This isn't enough to pay back my loans and I'm going to struggle to pay it back. I'm also missing out on the £100 bonus because of my days off trying to save some money waiting for EMA to come(Dates we were told we would get it were always changing). So, because of the delay of EMA I will be in debt for some time. I feel that each student that have had their EMA delayed should be paid the bonus regardless of how many times they've turned up as a sort of compensation for taking so long.

I know some of the older folk would be thinking that we shouldn't complain as you didn't have the opportunity to receive free money for learning but without this money most of us would go straight into work or would go to a college/sixth form college that is close which means we wouldn't spend so much on travel. ...
Owen, Nottingham

I applied for my son at the end of July and have still not received a single payment despite being told he has been awarded the maximum £30.00 a week. 5 times I have been told it is 'in the post'. The reason he war awarded the maximum is because we are short of money - this is lunacy!!!!
Sue Phipps, Yeoil

QUOTE " The helpline had been notorious for its inefficiency this autumn but now, he said, had improved considerably, payments would be backdated to include all those to which students' learning providers said they were entitled."

The system is rubbish I process EMA payments, and it is too slow, the cut off point is Tuesdays at 5pm, it continuously crashes, new learners are still waiting for their EMA to be sorted out as well, and are waiting for backpayments since god knows when!
Jo Smith, London

My grandson in Birmingham is still waiting for arrears of EMA from September, 5 weekly payments have been received but not concurrent, getting through by telephone is horrendous to find out what is happening, so things are not running smoothly at all.
Mrs A V Watson, Middlesbrough

I was becomeing concerned that I would never recive the money and was just about to ring them about it, I wont now I've read this article. Thank you.
Kirsty, East Hoathly, UK