David Lepper

Labour Party | Brighton Pavilion

Trapped by Catch 16

Debate about students usually focuses on universities, but for most people formal education beyond 16 happens in our sixth-form and further education colleges.

Despite erratic progress on funding immediately after Labour’s 1997 victory, I believe 16+ further education is one of our successes.

Funding has improved – in the year to March 2006 the Learning and Skills Council-funded spending was up 13% on the previous year at £10.4 billion.

Labour’s Education Maintenance Allowance now helps many from low income families to enter or stay in education or training post 16, gaining skills to improve their chances for the future  - and which are vital to our economy. Take-up of the EMA is now 82 %.  By the end of 2005 76.2% of our 16-18 year olds were in education or training.

But there are still obstacles for some.

In November 2005, as chair of Parliament’s cross-party group on Foyers, I helped launch the Foyer Federation’s “Give Us A Chance” campaign in Westminster to persuade the government to change a policy which stops some young people entering further education and makes others drop out at the age of 19.

The country’s network of Foyers provides supported accommodation to some 10,000 young people each year who can no longer live at home and are potentially vulnerable. Their tenancy contract is linked to a commitment to education and training.

Most Foyer residents have missed out in education up to 16 for reasons beyond their control, but are now determined to change that as a vital step to independent living as adults.

But their average age is 19  - the age at which a regulation comes into play removing eligibility for Income Support and, with it, for Housing Benefit. Instead the option is to claim Job Seekers Allowance - which means declaring yourself available for work and for New Deal help.

Fine. Unless you are about to start a further education course of 16 hours or more a week. Then you are deemed not eligible for work, or for JSA and, because of that, not eligible for Housing Benefit. How do you play your rent ? Catch 16.

At the campaign launch parliamentarians heard from young people, including some from the Foyer in my own Brighton Pavilion constituency, who had faced the difficult choice of switching to a different, less appropriate course of less than 16 hours to maintain their Housing Benefit eligibility or staying on their current course and leaving the secure home the Foyer provides because they can no longer pay the rent and going back to “sofa-surfing” in friends houses.

These are committed young people who want to succeed. In the year since the campaign launch we have put the case to government that to change the 16 Hour Rule would be good for young people and for the government’s targets to improve the economy’s skills base.

In April 2006 came a change which has not been widely enough publicised allowing anyone already on a 16 Hour + non-advanced course at 19 to keep their HB until the course ends or they reach 20.

Earlier this year Jane Slowey and Sophie Livingstone, the Foyer Federation’s Chief Executive and Head of Policy, and I met Department of Works and Pensions Minister James Plaskitt. He has visited Foyers and shown real interest in looking again at the rule, which, of course, doesn’t only catch those in Foyers. As Learning and Skills Council Chief Executive Mark Haysom pointed out when I raised the issue with him in October.

However, the Foyers link between housing and education could provide a basis for a pilot scheme to test if relaxing the 16 Hour Rule improves participation at 19+

I hope that in a future issue I’ll be able to report that this is another example of how backbench MP pressure can help change government policy