The End of EMA: Evidence-Based and Economically Necessary or Simply Political?
“We act on the basis of evidence”, declared the Minister for Further Education John Haynes when justifying the government’s decision to scrap the Educational Maintenance Allowance Scheme (EMA) in 2010 (HC Deb 15 November 2010). However, evidence seemed to play a minor role in the end of EMA. Similarly, while austerity was used to justify it, economic constraints by themselves cannot explain its scrapping. Instead, party-politics were crucial in ending the scheme.
The EMA scheme, which was implemented in the United Kingdom under a Labour government in the summer of 2004, was aimed at increasing participation among low income secondary school students. Students aged 16-18 received weekly payments based on their type of course and income, and on the condition that they did not miss school other than for extenuating circumstances. Although the scheme continues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it was stopped in England in 2011. In what follows, I will question whether the end of EMA was truly decided based on evidence.
The Role of Evidence
According to the government, EMA was “unresponsive and poorly targeted” (HC Deb 02 November 2010). These claims were based on two studies in particular. Although both studies demonstrated that EMA had “met its policy objective of increasing participation among young people from lower income families” (Middleton et al., in Bolton, 2011, p. 4), the government used them to highlight the large proportion of students who would most likely have stayed in school even without the scheme (HC Deb 02 November 2010).
It appears that although evidence was used to justify the end of EMA, it was not what had determined the withdrawal of the scheme. In making the decision to stop funding for EMA, numerous studies emphasising the success of the scheme were ignored (DCSF 2009; Dearden et al. 2009). Indeed, instead of carefully considering research evidence, the ‘evidence’ which was used in the political discussion surrounding EMA was often anecdotal. Both the opposition and the Coalition government used letters sent in by their constituents, stories of conversations they had with people, and their personal experiences to support their respective arguments for and against EMA (HC Deb 02 November 2010).
The Role of Economic Constraints
Economic constraints were certainly part of the Coalition government’s justification for the scrapping of EMA. The Spending Review of 2010 emphasised that removing the EMA scheme would lead to a “unit cost reductions in the 16 to 19 participation budget […] saving around £0.5 billion” (HM Treasury 2010, 42), and Conservative MPs called the scheme “expensive” and referred to the need to save as there was “no money left” (HC Deb 02 November 2010; HC Deb 20 December 2010).
Britain was, indeed, still suffering the effects of the global financial crisis in 2010 when the withdrawal of EMA was announced. By the time of the 2010 general election, even the Labour party was proposing public expenditure cuts (Rafferty 2014, 347). Once elected, the Coalition government presented austerity as “a matter of economic necessity”, using the situation in Eurozone crisis countries as justification (Rafferty 2014, 347). The necessity of austerity is, however, debated (Blyth 2013; Rafferty 2014).
Even if we accept a need for public spending cuts, this does not in itself explain why EMA was cut. Austerity did not lead to spending cuts in all social policy areas (Chowdry and Emmerson 2010; HM Treasury 2010), with child benefits being frozen, rather than reduced (Vis, van Kersbergen, & Hylands, 2011, p. 348), for example. EMA had been shown to be cost effective (Chowdry and Emmerson 2010; Dearden et al. 2009), which was brought to the government’s attention during parliamentary debates (HC Deb 20 December 2010). Scrapping it was likely to cost the government more than it was saving, because it created an increase in benefit claiming NEETs, people “not in education, employment or training” (Burnham in HC Deb 20 December 2010). Hence, economic constraints alone did not determine the removal of EMA.
The Role of Political Constraints
How evidence is interpreted and used in policymaking is influenced by a party’s values. For example, while the coalition government chose to ignore an IFS report demonstrating that the benefits of EMA outweigh its costs, the Labour Party recently used the same report to justify their pledge to reinstate EMA, concluding that “the benefits of EMA overwhelmingly outweighed the costs” (LabourPress 2016).
In ending EMA, the Conservative party in particular was acting in the way expected of them by their electorate. During the campaign for the 2010 general election, the Conservative’s campaign “was about swift and severe cut-backs” (Kickert 2012, 304). Members of the public who voted for the party were aware that there would be substantial spending cuts. The image transmitted to future voters during the election campaign therefore constrained the government in terms of the policy actions they could take to respond to the economic crisis. EMA in particular fell victim to the government’s cuts because it affected few of the government’s future votes – the majority of EMA recipients were below the voting age. The scheme had a reputation for unnecessarily handing out money to students who did not need it (HC Deb 15 November 2010), making it a safe programme to cut without much public backlash.
Conclusion
Although the government insisted “it is important that policy is based on evidence” (HC Deb 20 December 2010), the decision to scrap EMA seemed to have little to do with a careful consideration of evidence. Seemingly important research evidence was ignored, and instead opinions played a large role in determining its end. Furthermore, it cannot be said that there was not enough money available to fund EMA. Nor was it the case that EMA was not cost-effective. Scrapping it may, in fact, have cost the government more than was saved. Rather, the symbolic economic constraints imposed by the Conservative party’s image amongst its voters ultimately led to the withdrawal of the scheme. In reality the scrapping of the scheme was not financially beneficial for the country, but it was politically beneficial for the government, as voters saw their election promises being kept.
References
Blyth, Mark. 2013. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Oxford University Press.
Bolton, Paul. 2011. Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) Statistics, Note SNSG/5778. House of Commons Library.
Chowdry, Haroon, and Carl Emmerson. 2010. An Efficient Maintenance Allowance? DCSF. 2009. Departmental Report 2009.
Dearden, Lorraine, Carl Emmerson, Christine Frayne, and Costas Meghir. 2009. “Conditional Cash Transfers and School Dropout Rates.” Journal of Human Resources 44(4): 827–57.
Department for Children, Schools and Families. 2009. Departmental Report 2009.
HC Deb (02 November 2010) vol. 517. Available at: http://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2010-11-02/debates/10110254000002/EducationMaintenanceAllowance (Accessed 09/11/2017)
HC Deb (15 November 2010) vol. 518. Available at: http://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2010-11-15/debates/10111511000021/EducationMaintenanceAllowance (Accessed 09/11/2017)
HC Deb (20 December 2010) vol. 520. Available at: http://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2010-12-20/debates/1012206000014/EducationMaintenanceAllowance (Accessed 09/11/2017)
HM Treasury. 2010. Spending Review 2010.
Kickert, Walter. 2012. “State Responses to the Fiscal Crisis in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands.” Public Management Review 14(3): 299–309. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2011.637410.
LabourPress. 2016. “Labour Promise to Reinstate Student Grants and EMA.” http://press.labour.org.uk/post/149046072534/labour-promise-to-reinstate-student-grants-and-ema (November 9, 2017).
Rafferty, Anthony. 2014. “Gender equality and the impact of recession and austerity in the UK.” Revue de l’OFCE 133(2): 335–61. https://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=REOF_133_0335.
Vis, Barbara, Kees van Kersbergen, and Tom Hylands. 2011. “To What Extent Did the Financial Crisis Intensify the Pressure to Reform the Welfare State?” Social Policy & Administration 45(4): 338–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9515.2011.00778.x.
About the Author
Inga Steinberg is Jenkins scholar pursuing an MSc in Comparative Social Policy. Prior to Oxford, she completed a BSc in Liberal Arts and Sciences: Global Challenges, majoring in Policy Science at Leiden University College in The Hague. Her bachelor’s thesis explored the relationship between ability grouping in mathematics classes and its effects on the gender mathematics gap in terms of educational achievement. She will further investigate related topics through her research at the department, and wishes to go into a DPhil after graduating.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect any editorial policy.