One of the films that was bound to be on during Christmas period when I was a child and low and behold is on this Christmas as well, was the Prince and the Pauper. For those who are unaware of the plot, it is the film adaptation of Mark Twain’s classic story about how a Tudor Prince of England switches places with an identical teenage boy from impoverished an London background and both get to meet one another and see how the other half live. At its core this story is about equality and fairness, they are separated at birth by their background yet both prove capable in the other’s shoes.

The story has relevance for me, as well as being one of the first recipients of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), I was also the first generation of my family to go to university and I to study History at the University of St Andrews at the same time as Prince William. I know how important EMA was to my life. The scheme worked because it gave economic power to teenagers like me who were without any and thus propelled us into harnessing our individual talents. That is how a young teenager born into a council estate in London and from a single parent household could attend the same university as the future King of England, but sadly now that drawbridge is being slowly pulled up.

Last week, despite a national campaign organised by the Save EMA campaign that I run and further evidence by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) proving that the EMA works, in helping empower young people like me from disadvantaged backgrounds to take control of our lives and stay in further education, the government still plan to scrap the scheme.

The government claim to want to abolish the EMA due to its so called “deadweight”, however almost all large public policies have an element of “deadweight”. For example, the government also want to bring in a marriage tax incentive, which ironically costs roughly the same amount of money as EMA (£550M), and has a huge deadweight. According to the IFS it will only benefit 3 out of 10 marriages, with some pointing out that it will only benefit couples where one partner remains at home. So in the land of Emily Pankhurst, this presents a large equality issue for young women from deprived backgrounds, because the government are basically saying to young women “we want to encourage you to get married but not to be educated”. This is not so much back to basics as back to the past.

We must also bare in mind that there could be even wider equality issues at stake here as the government want to replace EMA with a form of discretionary fund, the latter are widely recognised by organisations like the LSC as having a “disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities, the disabled and the most disadvantaged.” For those who are still in a quandary about how, just look to the former head-teacher and someone the Conservative party invited to speak to their annual conference this year, Katharine Birbalsingh. In writing last week for the Telegraph, she describes EMA recipients as “Goons”, who attend universities that should be “razed to the ground”.

These comments came from someone who was a head-teacher at an inner city school, the decisions for who receives these new discretionary fund payments would come from someone much junior with the power of Herod over these young people’s lives. Now I am not saying that all such individuals would be led by prejudice, but why open the door for the possibility of it occurring at all. During my time at school, I was suspended for bad behaviour on numerous occasions and rubbed up enough staff in the wrong way to have similar views thought of me. I was wrong to behave in that manner then, but young people under duress do stupid things.

The government’s plans are taking a massive gamble with the prospects of some of the poorest teenagers not only in our capital but also in our country; and it is further endangering equality in England. Students from Eton and my old school in London will always start life at different ends of the socio-economic order, but the ability to compete on an equal footing in the education system needs to be strengthened and not weakened, otherwise in England princes and pauper will only mix in fairy tales.

Merry Christmas from Save EMA