Thousands of school pupils have been told this week that there is no guarantee they will receive their Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) grant before Christmas.

The scheme, which awards up to £30 a week to pupils aged between 16 and 18 from low-income families, was introduced by Labour as an incentive to keep young people in education past the statutory school leaving age of 16.

Thousands of school pupils have been told this week that there is no guarantee they will receive their Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) grant before Christmas.

The scheme, which awards up to £30 a week to pupils aged between 16 and 18 from low-income families, was introduced by Labour as an incentive to keep young people in education past the statutory school leaving age of 16.

The application process was plagued by problems this year, ranging from glitches with the telephone lines to the complete closure of the recently-introduced online application form.

The Guardian reported that in some colleges less than 10% of pupils who applied for the grants have received confirmation of their application.

The Secretary for Schools, Ed Balls, is said to be “frustrated” at the delays to this years EMA, and there have been calls for his resignation.

The company responsible for processing the 425,000 applications, Liberata, has admitted that more than a third of the applications have not yet been processed.

As a result, Liberata has been fined £3million by the Financial Services Authority, but it not the first time they have been punished for administrative errors.

In April this year they were fined £525, 000 for failures in their systems which caused life and pensions policy holders to lose over £17,000.

The National Union for Students has warned that these delays may mean that students are forced to drop out of further education courses.

Rob Wye, a senior official at the Learning and Skills Council, the body responsible for overseeing Liberata’s work, told The Guardian: “It is important to recognise that learners can be assured that they will receive their EMA, as our policy is to backdate all payments for applications received within 28 days of when a course starts”.