EMA (update)

[Tiny]

At the moment I am working at one of the offices which are dealing with processing the applications for the EMA. When I went for the job, I was pre screened with an apptitude test and had a couple of computer tasks to complete, both of which I passed with flying colours. It was made to sound as though they were being very choosy in who they wanted, and not just anybody could go.

The agency I am with is acting as a secondary agent and are finding people for another main agent and then passing them onto Liberata, so many feet in the trough. Why not pay us the full going rate and not have the legalised slave trade, with you earning money for not just one agent but two agents which put their commissions on top of your own wage.

Anyway, I started the job in the middle of August. The induction is taken by a team leader, who was incredibly down beat about the job. He pointed out that we could do as much over time as we liked and that he himself had worked 130 hours the previous month. He let us know that Capita had, had the contract before and this is who all the permanant staff had worked for before, but now Liberata had won the contract through a cheaper bid, and so now everything was being moved from one custom office where everything was in place and procedures worked. To a brand new built office which at present, had limited internet connection or telephone lines, and also disorganised systems with many more staff still to be transferred with nothing in place for them to move to, or a system of getting the job done as efficiently as they had done before.

[Tiny]

Induction included a tour of the building and then set to work. No health and safety, No what to do in case of fire. Just hello this is what we do, when I joined two years ago I had a full weeks training, you will learn on the job.

My first job was prepping where by you prepare the application forms for scanning, I was trained by another agency worker who had been there three weeks before. Now the job itself was not taxing, but still various questions were left unanswered and many mistakes were made by myself and others, owing to the fact we did things which we had not been told were wrong. They have three scanners one of which can not scan blue ink, so that has to be either photo copied and the proofs put seperately in a clear folder or left for the scanner which can scan blue items. This I did not know so certain applications get pulled by the black scanner and put to one side, all this slowing the process up. When peoples proofs do get put to one side they do not always get back to the application, a rare event but easy done when folks do not know the correct procedure of prepping and then de prepping.

A lot of the permanat staff are over worked having to teach agency staff and answering their every questions, with the uncertainty in the back ground of the new company which has taken over, only today everyone has been issued with their P45 and the new contracts whic as per usual are less than the ones they had previously but for more work.

The agency staff is made up of kids, foriegners and a few people like myself who are looking for a full time job, Now I would say I am in the minority of agency staff who care about the job and want to well and get kept on and to secure a contract. A lot of them are young or foriegn and do not care or have the skills, at every opportunity they are talking or skiving. A portion of us now do letters and sending back proofs, this should be done methodically. the application has come in, been prepped, then scanned, then checked over and assessed and now we send the proofs back and send a letter to say here is your proofs you will know later what you are awarded.

[Tiny]

Applications are normally in batches of 15 the people who train you again I found out after, were agency staff who had been there only a few weeks longer than myself. You check details add the person to the computer system and generate a letter and click the relevant proofs which they have sent in, normally tax credit sheets or bank statements. These are then put tpo be batch checked to ensure the correct address and student name is put on the letter or that the letter is addressed correctly according to if they are an independent learner or not.

On this first batch check a lot of errors have been found normally five out of fifteen letters had some form of mistakes, some minor like notrh road or notingham... But others more serious like proofs not being checked and when the applications have been prepped and de prepped the wrong proof going to the wrong person.

When you batch check you take the letter which needs correcting out and then a nominated person corrects those letters, this got so bad that several people had to do this job. the then checked batches should be one in ten checked. Now the problem is this, the people who spent half the day making wrong letters then did the first checks, and this was only spotted by the one in ten checker. as they check only one in ten letters who knows how many wrongly addressed items have got through.

What makes it worse now is that young people with only the second day on the job have been asked to one in ten check, this job in itself should be done by the permanant staff, as it takes time to know the systems and what you are looking for. The errors are increasing and the guards to prevent them are getting weaker.

They are now working 24 hours to try and catch up with the back log, the night shift by it's very nature has got less compatable people than the day shift from the agency, most of them have been found to be running around the offices, and those that have done work, have done it unsuppervised and in many instances wrongly, producing hundreds of useless letters, most of which have twice and three times as many errors as the day shift.

Now I feel sorry for the frontline staff as the call centre will have to deal with thousands of irate people wanting their £30 a week, and seeing the standard of form filling most of them could have easily got a job at the EMA... But the staff are working hard with many obstacles against them, and also the problem that they can not get rid of the bad workers from the agency but have to keep them as they are desperate for staff, they now want another 75 staff to work the night shift, and can hardly fill it now with people let alone vet them for quaility.

Now why take this contract of a company which had all the procedures in place abd could handle this, just to save money which it could end up costing more in the end.

Plus having a look at the amounts of people get in tax credits and now this EMA award, I wonder how many people are fleecing this country and how easy it is, I wonder at what point they may just turn around and award everyone £30 to save face and how much this will cost the country.

It seems this country simply does not work, this country is broke and desperately needs fixing.

Who on earth will do it, and will they just throw more money at scroungers and bleed anyone who works dry.

Having looked at the tax credit awards it seems a waste of time working, there is many applications which get more morney that what I do for a full weeks work and then they get awarded £30 to stay on at college, to study what and to get what jobs?

The way the EMA is run seems indicative of how this country is.

But that is the inside track, I would like to know wqhat some of you suggest or think about this.

[Tiny]

Sorry for the 3 parter but it would not let me put more than 5000 characters down, but I had to get this off my chest

[Iain Lindley]

If you're happy to go public with that, I suggest you e-mail that over to a journalist...

[Tiny]

Having looked back through what I wrote, I noticed quite a few spelling mistakes... Not much cop for the job I am doing 

But seriously, I wanted to let off some steam and to show an insiders perspective.

Ultimately I need the job, but it could well be the longest resignation note in history if I let it be known who I was.

[Fisher_gate]

I strongly support the idea of the EMA, it is one of the few genuinely positive things New Labour have done in Education.  However handing it out to a private agency, one with a checkered record after the Individual Learning Account fiasco, is New Labour privatisation ideology gone mad. 

As the rest of education privatisation through the awful Academy programme and the Building Schools for the  Future programme continues, there are more disasters round the corner.

Respect supporter Richard Hatcher, Director of Research in education at Birmingham City University, has written extensively on the dangers of New Labour's privatisation in Education - here is a recent analysis of developments in Birmingham LEA. http://birminghamresist.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/privatisation-and-schools-in-birmingham/

[Simon Cooke]

Y'know I find myself agreeing with our resident Trot.  Not becasue I've suddenly become a convert to inefficiency and the socialist way but because the manner of private contracting within Government is upsidedown.  We create a market where the 'customer' is not the person receiveing the service but an anonymous Whitehall office.  And a system wherein the 'performance' of the contracted agency is determined by financial 'efficiency' rather than service quality.  This is as described - what matters is processing 'x' applications rather than ensuring that John Student or Mary Colleger gets the entitlement that the Government has decided should be theirs.

The current Government seems obsessed by this contracting culture - I know it doesn't delivern any better than the 'inefficient' public delivery.  If you haven't the balls to create real markets (which would work) stick with public sector delivery - at least it has the pretence of accountability.

[JohnLoony]

Am I supposed to know what "EMA" is?  Or what it has got to do with elections? 

[Fisher_gate]

Am I supposed to know what "EMA" is?  Or what it has got to do with elections? 

EMA stands for Educational Maintenance Allowance - a flagship New Labour policy in England to give grants of up to £30 per week to 16-18 year olds who stay on in full time education.  It helps with bus fares and the basic costs of staying on at school or college past the current leaving age of 16, and is designed to incentivise further education rather than unemployment or low paid unskilled work.  It is based on parental income and the majority of recipients are working class, doing vocational courses in FE Colleges, and the proportion doing A levels in sixth forms is much smaller (hence the lack of awareness of this as an issue among the middle classes and chattering classes that normally influence education policy).

They have been running nationally since 2004 and there were a series of pilots across the country before that, which were run very well through LEAs. But the administration of the full EMAs scheme bypassed the LEAs and was handed out to a private agency, originally via Capita, one of New Labour's pet privatisation companies. But the contract has since been shifted to Liberata, another "outsourcing" company, with inevitable consequences.  The issue is politically controversial now because the administration has hit the buffers this term and about 150,000 young people face delays and problems.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7593747.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/aug/29/furthereducation.1419education?gusrc=rss&feed=education

As well as LEAs, there is another state-owned vehicle available that could have been used to administer this ie the Student Loans Company for HE students, which despite initial problems is actually quite efficient now and works closely with LEAs and handles a much larger number of transactions.

My own view is that despite good intentions, the administration of this scheme is a classic example of new Labour privatisation gone wrong, like the recent fiasco with SAT marks (another educational TLA!).  The testimony above confirms this analysis.

[DBIV]

During the debates over university tuition fees, there were those who pointed out that one group of students had always had to pay tuition fees and usually didn't receive a grant - the mostly working-class kids who were in further education. Needless to say the media coverage was dominated by bewailing the fact that the mostly middle-class university students would now have to borrow against future earnings to pay their way in the student union bars, rather than have the taxpayers fund them.

[Fisher_gate]

During the debates over university tuition fees, there were those who pointed out that one group of students had always had to pay tuition fees and usually didn't receive a grant - the mostly working-class kids who were in further education. Needless to say the media coverage was dominated by bewailing the fact that the mostly middle-class university students would now have to borrow against future earnings to pay their way in the student union bars, rather than have the taxpayers fund them.

I don't disagree with your point about the inconsistencies in the debate. 

I do however believe that it is a fundamental socialist principle that education should be free and the tax system should be used to finance it.  If University adds so much to graduate salaries, and ludicrous claims about a degree being worth £400,000 in a lifetime were claimed by the government in the debate, then those who have benefitted from university education will pay more tax.  The fact that a few people who haven't benefitted from higher education will have to pay slightly more tax (eg the Jade Goodeys of this world) does not worry me in the slightest - the majority of those paying higher taxes will be graduates if the claim about the economic benefits are true and if 50% go through HE as is the target. 

The tax system is progressive, student loan repayments for fees are regressive, because they have to be repaid in full even if the graduate is unable to benefit from the higher potential earnings eg if they get a job with a charity caring for people with disabilities they will get paid less than someone working in an investment bank in the city.  Because the interest rate on student loans was originally linked to inflation, wealthy students could claim the loan, put the money into a PEP, live off mummy and daddy, cash in the PEP when they graduated, pay off the loan and make a tidy profit (this happened!).  Because the Treasury picks up the initial cost of the loan, the student loan system is a massive subsidy to the middle classes who make up the bulk of HE participation.

Now that interest rates are not zero in real terms, devout muslims cannot take advantage of them leading to a form of discrimination in which families now act as bankers for student in muslim communities, in place of the government.

The ideology driving the loans system is one of privatisation and marketisation.

The EMA system is an alternative and a positive step in that it is a non-repayable grant  However it is the Grand Old Duke of York strategy.  Debt averse working class 16-18 year olds are led up the hill of further education, only to be marched back down again when they discover the cost of the loans for Higher Education in the long term is more than their families have ever contemplated in a lifetime.  The Part Time student grants system introduced two years ago is also a positive development (it is administered by LEAs by the way, not the private sector) as is the continuing payment of bursaries to students of nursing and other health professions, and social work and post graduate teaching training [all administered by various state-owned bodies note, not the private sector - with no significant complaints that they are inefficient or incompetent].  That the government has to provide so many props (EMA, Part time grants, bursaries for certain courses) is an indication that the basic notion of the market does not work.  Better to sweep away the entire loans system and replace it with zero fees and grants for the neediest.   

The fact that Scotland has implemented a different system, and last time I checked the sky had not fallen in there, indicates that the argument that "there is no alternative" to fee loans in England is specious.

[Tiny]

In the divine wisdom of the powers that be, we are sending out letters today which are returning people their proofs and it ends with saying " When contacting the EMA please quote your EMA number which you will find at the top of the letter. "

Every letter though, tells you that your EMA number will be allocated. We are not allowed to include the number in the letter.


You could not make it up.

[Innocent Abroad]

Y'know I find myself agreeing with our resident Trot.  Not becasue I've suddenly become a convert to inefficiency and the socialist way but because the manner of private contracting within Government is upsidedown.  We create a market where the 'customer' is not the person receiveing the service but an anonymous Whitehall office.  And a system wherein the 'performance' of the contracted agency is determined by financial 'efficiency' rather than service quality.  This is as described - what matters is processing 'x' applications rather than ensuring that John Student or Mary Colleger gets the entitlement that the Government has decided should be theirs.

The current Government seems obsessed by this contracting culture - I know it doesn't delivern any better than the 'inefficient' public delivery.  If you haven't the balls to create real markets (which would work) stick with public sector delivery - at least it has the pretence of accountability.

Can you sketch out for us what a "real market" would look like in this case?

[Tiny]

Update...

The past week has been hectic. it seems that all the bad press coverage and not this particular thread, (but you never know) caused quite a revolution.

We now have nearly 200 new staff coming on board, all of which through the agency so will cost the company a fortune,( unsure if this is passed onto the government) They are renting another building. Something which they had been asked to do a few months ago, when they could see this problem arise of not enough people to cope with the applications.

All new agency staff are being taken to a local football ground and being trained. (and not in the art of football)

of course the interim system is somewhat chaotic, most providers have little or no information about how it works. They are being bombarded with questions from students, and the student line is simply ringing off the hook as the 200 staff are not trained yet to answer the phone so only one call centre is dealing with this.

So here is the rub, Why are we spending so much money to give students £30 a week? How much does it cost to give these students the money? Wouldn't the money be better spent on the schools and colleges themselves rather than giving £30 to a student which in most cases will squander it, or if they are poor it would barely cover the increases in fuel costs.

I find the whole system pathetic and symbiotic of this government, create a scheme to try and not give people the money they got before...

ie most of these students would have gone on the dole and so it is easier to pay them £30 to stay at school than give them benefits to be at home. Then in a few years time the labour minister( well in a few years time it will be a tory one, but same difference) will say how many children they have got to stay onto further education compared with the years before and how brilliant they are...

When basically having seen the people which come for the agency jobs, a lot of them have recently left university with 2;1s and the like and could barely pick up a phone or cope with everyday tasks in life. So they get themselves a job processing applications for the EMA...

Are we breeding chickens which will ultimately just be fed to the new chickens which we breed? if so this is all just crazy.