Student Financial Support Help

lovehackney

Yes apologies, according to the guide for 2015/16, they DO take into account if you are supporting more than one child, however it will not change much - they disregard £1,130 per child that is financially dependent on you.
So as I understand it, if your income is £75,000 total for each of three daughters, your income will be assessed as (£75,000 - £1130 - £1130), which unfortunately makes no difference to you.
Not sure how they have derived the £1130 figure - thats pre tax income as well.

andyfromotley

Have you checked out the proposed changes to student financing. I THINK they were proposing that everyone would get a maintenance loan of around 8k? (and no grants at all).If so it may be worth looking into deferring until that system comes in.

I may however be wrong about this, as i only paid a passing interest.

[Deleted User]

foolofbeans wrote: »

If nobody took a risk by going into business who would we all work for?!
I don't think it's unfair for a parent to expect their child to have the same opportunities as other children and I think access to education should be a right for all (not just the very rich or the very poor).

Its called forward planning

foolofbeans

venison wrote: »

Its called forward planning

Not many people plan for a huge loss to their business - how could they?
If you mean parents should forward plan for their child to go to university then perhaps you are right. I do think though that most parents assume paid for education is something that happens in the USA not the UK.
The OP won't be the first or last to be caught unaware when it comes to funding for university. It's not obvious to all that there is a tuition fee loan and a maintenance loan.

Sanctioned_Parts_List

There but for the grace...

Tuition fees were first levied in 1998, so no English child entering university this year should ever have had an expectation of free education. While it's easy to comment on having ample time to plan and save, the practice is that most people don't do this - if they did, the student loans system wouldn't exist at all!

OP, your options through government are limited. Your combined gross income puts you outside the range of all their means tested top-up options straight away, so your application for relief won't be considered regardless of debt.

You understandably don't mention what degrees your daughters are considering, but technical degrees (STEM, or whatever the buzzword-du-jour is) are a lot easier to get external sponsorship and placement/year-in-industry work than arts subjects.

It's also worth going right back to first principles and determining whether a degree is even necessary or beneficial to what the girls actually want to do. There aren't so many time-wasting degrees these days (BA Basket Weaving was, I think, the funniest I found, ironically offered by a Russell Group university) but given the size of your and their investment in time and money, do challenge both the need for a degree and the choice of subject.

Consider alternative routes to the same end: apprenticeships often produce better engineers than degrees, for example.

Then to see whether closer-to-home/correspondence/OU options are available. Then to see whether scholarships/bursaries/industrial sponsorship is available.

If a degree is definitely necessary, the subject's worthwhile and there's no external financing available, then they will need to work to make up the difference, and borrow from anyone who'll lend.

Pixie5740

I studied a STEM subject at university and every year I managed to find a bursary or two to apply for which I always got because nobody else seemed to bother looking for them.

The Open University is another option and your children might be able to eventually transfer credits to a full time course when the financial situation improves.

There's also studying abroad which is something I would probably do if faced with £9k fees every year. It can work out cheaper to study in Scandanavia or the Netherlands, Germany as well I think and the courses are in English. Not to mention that studying Abroad gives you the opportunity to learn another language and it looks good on your CV.

GwylimT

My son worked while studying for a-levels, he also then took a year out to work fulltime. He did buy some treats, but he mainly saved for university. I had always put his child benefit into a bank account, so if needed he had that to fall back on.

His loan (full loan) wasn't enough to cover rent and unlike many students we didn't have the luxury of a university on the doorstep. He studied medicine and once he had settled in he found a job in second semester to support himself. He managed to work for all of his course and actually left university with savings.

Most students are able to work to support themselves, so I don't see the loan situation being a problem at all.

AnotherJoe

The girls delay their places by one year, take a job this year, stay with you and save up, then go next year.

greensalad

AnotherJoe wrote: »

The girls delay their places by one year, take a job this year, stay with you and save up, then go next year.

This seems like the most reasonable option.

Plus a year of working and saving does wonders for a teenagers maturity. Honestly. I left school and joined a course that I thought was what I was supposed to do, because I hadn't had a lot of time to really think about what I was doing with my life. I plodded into my course, hated it, had a nervous breakdown and quit. After I quit and regained my health, I started working. I learnt so much about myself. What I was good at, what I needed to do to be independent, how I could be happy doing something I chose not just what I plodded into. I started university the year after and went from being a C student all through school and through my first term of my course and came out a top-of-the-class student. I put it all down to taking that time out to really think hard about adult life. I actually think gap years should be mandatory and kids shouldn't leave school just to go to the next bit of schooling so quickly.

I would strongly recommend a deferred place and a year working. If they secure the places now they will know whether they have got them in August after results day and can then be confident they know where they are going, giving them more time to research and plan about the new city, instead of the short 3 weeks of planning most students have.

Brightspark87

Its a tough situation isn't it?

My brothers faced the same at uni - as my step dad lived with my mum (dad had income too anyhow so didn't matter to them). However - step sisters who lived with their mum getting most of step dads income got the highest levels of help from the student loans as maintenance isn't counted towards the income or at least pre 2006 it wasn't.

Do they expect step parents to financial contribute towards students? I don't think that is fair either...

My youngest brother deferred and during his year saved enough to see him through the first 2 years and now on placement earning and saving enough for third and final year as my Dad has now retired so has less income and cant help in the same way.

So depending on the course a placement year is also helpful for this basis. You can still claim some student loan as you have fees to pay to the uni still but worth keeping in mind.