Training allowance axing upsets budding students

Raising three children on $500 a week on the Domestic Purposes Benefit is tough enough without trying to study for a career, says a Hastings solo mother.
So when she found out just days into her first tertiary course that the Government's Training Incentive Allowance (TIA) had been scrapped for courses over level 3, she was "gutted".
"I got in the car and I just bawled my eyes out. I went home and looked at my situation and pondered on it and thought, 'What can I do?'," she said.
The Government cut $3.6 million from the TIA, made available to those on the DPB, Emergency Maintenance Allowance, invalids' and widows' benefits.
The 27-year-old was relying on about $2500 in government allowance to cover her first-year course costs and for childcare for her children aged 4, 2 and 1.
"After my husband and I separated, I decided I needed to do something for my kids and nursing just turned out to be a passion of mine," she said.
Keeping a family on $500 a week was hard, she said. "I live with my parents because I can't afford to live on my own. That takes up half of the money, just living expenses. Then there's nappies and petrol and other expenses," she said.
Now, she's going to have to find the money somewhere else to study toward a Certificate in Foundation Studies in Nursing at Eastern Institute of Technology. She did not qualify for a student loan so the TIA was an option she went to a lot of effort to apply for, but was not told it was on its way out.
She was further angered when it was suggested she take a lower-level course to qualify for the funding.
After speaking to classmates about the situation, she and nine others met Labour List MP Stuart Nash of Napier.
The group resolved to start a Hawke's Bay-wide petition to the Government, calling for a reinstatement of the allowance.
"Something needs to be done about this. Everybody is struggling. There's a lot of frustration, and a lot of people made so much effort to get the documents together to apply," she said.
Fellow nursing student Gareth Farrell, 18, said he had been "amping" to train as a nurse and had instead had to take out a student loan.
Jodie Morgan, who has four children, said she had put her children into care and had been excited about becoming a nurse.
"You're getting penalised for trying to better yourself," she said.
 Mr Nash said the cut amounted to a "misallocation" of education money, in light of $35 million being invested in the private-school sector.
"The Government should be supporting, not hindering, people like Louise," he said.
"They are going to be paying tax for the next 30 years. They are going to repay it many times over."