Private school pupils 'claimed £52m under EMA scheme'

Some 51,388 teenagers attending fee-paying schools secured payments as part of the Education Maintenance Allowance scheme, it emerged.

Teenagers from households earning up to £30,810 were eligible for a grants under the programme, which has now been axed by the Coalition in favour of a smaller “targeted bursary” for the very poorest students.

In total, £51,876,390 went to sixth-formers in fee-paying schools and colleges, with the average teenager receiving a total of around £1,000 each.

Damian Hinds, the Conservative MP for East Hampshire, who sits on the Commons Education Select Committee, said: “Taxpayers will rightly wonder whether spending millions of pounds on grants for private school pupils was an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money.

“And it won’t surprise them one bit that it was the work of the last Labour government as it racked up the biggest deficit in Britain’s peacetime history.”