Student-grant axe facing challenge

AROUND 2,000 Oldham students have been given fresh hope of keeping crucial grants to fund their studies.

Campaigners are to launch a legal challenge to plans to axe the cash.

Ministers said they were scrapping the educational maintenance allowance (EMA) — weekly payments of up to £30 to help sixth-formers from poorer homes stay on in education — in October, despite previously promising it would survive.

That has left thousands of students who started courses in the autumn facing the prospect of having to complete their second year without any financial support.

But the Save EMA Campaign has announced it is drafting a court action against Education Secretary Michael Gove, arguing his decision to axe the funding breached a contract.

It says students who began courses last autumn had a “legitimate expectation” that they would receive EMA until they had completed their studies. That includes around 2,100 students in Oldham.

James Mills, head of the Save EMA campaign, said: “We’re saying a deal’s a deal.

“These young people have signed a contract and the Government should honour it.

“Research, by the University and College Union (UCU), shows that almost 40 per cent of students wouldn’t have started their course without EMA, so that’s a large numbers of people who will feel betrayed by this Government.”

Students sign an EMA contract, which commits them to rules on attendance, punctuality and achievement in return for the payments — imposing requirements on the Government, campaigners say.

Leaflets, distributed by the YPLA (Young People’s Learning Agency) in colleges last year, stated that students who started courses last autumn could expect funding up to 2013.

The Education Secretary insisted EMA had to go because its £500m cost is too high and has insisted help will be put in place for the poorest students but has yet to explain how a different scheme will operate.

Hopes of a legal challenge rose when Mr Gove lost in the High Court earlier this month, over his decision to scrap the Building Schools for the Future programme. That move was condemned as an “abuse of power”.

Now lawyers have suggested the new case could target Mr Gove over a “failure to consult” before axing EMA — the very reason he lost on BSF.