Is my friend lying to me?

Im talking to my friend now, and hes saying that our college has paid money into his bank account for passing his exams. I think its to do with the EMA(educational maintinance allowance or something like that).

I go to luton 6th form college, but as anyone heard of anything like this or is he just lying?

No its true, loads of people at my college get £30 a week as long as they turn up for all lectures and end of term bonuses for good attendance etc. I dont get any though since I don't qualify for it

Damn! What do you have to do to qualify for that? It's only available in certain areas though, isn't it?

Yeah I think it is, Im in the north east, Im not sure where else its done, I think its like a pilot study in the north east. Its to encourage more people to go on to further education after school I think. You qualify for it if your parents earn below a certain amount, the full amount is £30 a week and there's smaller amounts depending on how much your parents earn. I've got mates who's parents have split up and they live with one parent so they only have one persons income to put on the form so they qualify for the full amount, whereas I get nothing so I've gotta work 3 nights a week to get that sorta money and havin a job durin revision time isnt fun at all since it really cuts down the amount of time I have to revise and cuts down on leisure time as well which means stress! Plus if you get any EMA at all then you'll get end of term bonuses of about £80ish, sometimes more, exam bonuses for passing etc. It's very generous but again if ur not on EMA like me then it really does seem a bit unfair with such a big gap of nothing at all for some, then hundreds of pounds for others for doing exactly the same thing.

However a good side of not being on EMA is that if I feel like givin lessons at college a miss I can do, if people on EMA don't turn up for lessons their EMA for that week will be stopped and that will spoil their end of term bonuses etc.