According to the Scotsman newspaper EMA in Scotland could be scrapped at Christmas because of a £4.5moverspend by the SNP government.

Subsequently, the SNP announced that the Education Maintenance Allowance will now be under review in December. And on top of that Edinburgh Council has told students starting in January it will not send them application forms as the EMA scheme may not exist by then.

As Labour’s Claire Baker MSP has pointed out in a number of Parliamentary Questions in the Scottish Parliament, the saving the SNP are making from axing EMA is minimal.

By reducing the EMA income threshold from 23,000 to 19,000 the SNP estimate they will save only £3 million.

By removing the £20 payment the SNP estimate they will save £2.8 million and by axing the £10 payments they estimate they will save a mere £1.7 million.

They may save a few million pounds which is when you consider that only the budget for colleges in Scotland is £692.7m, this is really a small saving which impacts on the lives of the poorest families in Scotland in the most devastating manner.