A teenage college student has spoken of her struggle to receive education maintenance allowance since September.

Raema Johnstone, 16, from Long Lee, is meant to receive £30 a week from the Government to help support her while she attends Shipley College.

The tourism and travel student was also meant to receive £100 as a Christmas bonus. But until last week, she had received just £60 of the £300 owed.

After the Keighley News contacted the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), which is responsible for paying the allowance, £150 was paid into Raema’s account but further funds are yet to be deposited.

Raema said: “They tell you education maintenance allowance (EMA) is meant to be for the basics — to be able to travel to college and buy the things you need to study, like books and wallets for folders.

“I have to get a train and a bus to college so I haven’t been able to go in for a week now because I can’t afford to. Some people who travel to Bradford are in an even worse position.”

Her guardian, Jonathan Howell, is outraged by the delay, which is affecting thousands of others around the country.

He said that Raema had at first been told the applications of her and her classmates would have to be redone and then when he called the EMA call centre after a further delay it could not tell him whether the funds had been transferred or not.

Mr Howell said: “I think it is scary that somebody who is releasing money cannot tell you if they have done it or not. If my partner and I were not supporting her she would be in dire financial difficulties and might not have been able to carry on.

“I am told this is happening to a lot of people and I cannot even get through to speak to a supervisor — it is incredibly frustrating and wrong.”

Shipley College has said that it is aware of the national delay in processing EMA applications and its student services has been providing travel and lunch vouchers.

But Rob Wye, national director of young people’s learning and skills on the LSC, said that some learners might be experiencing a delay in payments because they had waited to cash in their Notice of Entitlement (NoC) or because the learner provider had not registered them quickly enough.

He said some improvement to the payment system had been made recently to make it quicker and easier to register and he said they were working with Capita to stabilise the transfer service.

He said: “We identified this issue some time ago and have since been encouraging learners to bring in their NoEs.

“Learners will not miss out on any payments even when there has been a delay registering them on the payments system. All EMA payments will be backdated to the date the application was made.”