Labour Spinning - Again

The cost of keeping teenagers at school until the age of 18 has soared to over £1billion, according to the Sunday Telegraph. The scheme, running since 2004 costs taxpayers £300million a year according to this report and which details incidents where students turn up, claim the allowance and then do little work after which they go home, where teachers have been verbally abused for non-authorisation of the allowance, etc.

The interesting point in the report is that the paper states 'Ministers claim the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) has been a success, raising the staying-on rate by almost 4 percent.

Call me a cynic if you wish, but of course it has been a success - it saves heaven knows how much (difference between JSA and EMA) plus more importantly these 'students' do not need to be counted in the jobless totals!

OK, so I am a cynic!