I want to help poor children says grant cuts protester, 13

A 13-year-old boy who joined hundreds of protesters opposing the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance told today how he wanted to lend his support to disadvantaged youngsters.

About 1,000 students and other demonstrators marched from Piccadilly Circus to Parliament Square in the minutes before MPs voted down an amendment to save the weekly payment last night.

They included Jake Phillips who joined the peaceful demonstration on his own after attending Acland Burghley school in Camden during the day.

His schoolmate Leon Murphy, also 13, was kettled for three hours in November as a demonstration against university tuition fees turned violent.

Jake, who also attended protests on December 9, the day of the vote on tuition fees, said yesterday's protest was "much better".

He said: "Before I have gone down there with a couple of friends. Today I knew it was going to be a peaceful protest. My family had worries about other protests as they were proper ones about tuition fees but this one was much better. Even though I'm not going to university myself I want to support other kids who can't afford it."

Another protester Jenny Bloom, 20, an English literature student at London Metropolitan University, said: "People in power don't know what it is to have no money. Both my parents worked and my family was still on £13,000 a year. Without the EMA I wouldn't have been able to go to college."

In spite of a light police presence, yesterday's protest went off without trouble as demonstrators danced, chanted and held up placards outside the House of Commons.

Inside Parliament, the call for Education Secretary Michael Gove to rethink his decision to scrap the payment was defeated by 317 votes to 258.

Mr Gove was told he had "thrown into reverse" the social mobility the allowance had given to hundreds of thousands of students from poorer backgrounds.

Shadow education secretary Andy Burnham said weekly payments of between £10 and £30 for students in households earning less than £30,800, were "overwhelmingly used to provide basics to support education" such as travel, books, equipment and food.