Following Liberata’s complete IT screw-up of the Education Maintenance Allowance:
The Department for Children, Schools and Families said there was no guarantee that pupils would get their grants – worth up to £30 a week for 16- to 18-year-olds – this side of Christmas.
The Guardian adds:
It will prove deeply embarrassing to the government, particularly after the delays which hit this year’s Sats marking process. Both involved new companies promising new IT systems to improve large data projects, which have failed to deliver
Strikes me that it’s not nearly embarrassed enough if it can come out with crass drivel like this:
the government described the grants as “incentives”, saying no one should be in serious hardship because they had not received the money.
This is the kind of hardship that people already need to experience in order to qualify for EMA in the first place. (You may notice that the cut-off point is just under half of an MP’s basic salary)
The ARCH Blog 