There is some brilliant news in the new guidelines for Education Maintenance Allowances- students who receive the EMA will now get authorised time off for “a provider representatives’ meeting, for example, Governors’ meeting” and “National Union of Students official business” without losing their EMA!

The FE campaign and the Participate Campaign have been lobbying nationally while local students’ unions have been campaigning locally over the last year for students who receive EMA to stop being penalised for taking part in student activities because they have not been allowed to take an authorised absence for particular activities and have therefore lost their money for that day- and all the hard work has paid off!

When I was a student officer I went to an NUS Lobby of Parliament on funding and the person sitting next to me from a different college, lobbying for fairer funding for further education had lost his EMA to be there because it wasn’t an authorised absence! Hopefully that won’t be happening any more!

Well done to everyone who was involved in this campaign- it just goes to show that a united, fighting campaign can make a real difference.

If you’d like to read the new EMA guidelines go to www.dfes.gov.uk and you can see the good news on page 51!

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/ellierussell/272547.aspx