Student loan -at my age!

MinnieCooper

Hi,
I need to change career (from NHS) due to lack of family time and childcare issues (husband also works shifts).
I am thinking of doing a Masters in Public Health or Computer Science as I am interested in a data career (clinical, if I can get it). I was looking at doing a PGCE but the cost of the PGCE is twice the price and I would end up at the bottom of the teacher payscale (£21K). I would be better off doing the MSc in PH/CS to get a higher salary.
As I would need to quit my role in the NHS to do this I would need to take out the maximum maintenance loan (£10k ish). I am trying to figure out how much and for how long I would pay it back. I will be 45 in March. Didn't have a student loan for my first degree.
Any ideas? Is it written off at any point?

MinnieCooper

Forgot to say that I have inherited money and have an endowment maturing in March so, all being well, we should be able to pay a lump sum on the mortgage and get the balance down to about £40K. We could reduced payments for a year while I re-train but I would still need a maintenance loan.

Bogalot

Have you heard of Google?

https://www.gov.uk/funding-for-postgraduate-study

Voyager2002

MinnieCooper wrote: »

Hi,
I need to change career (from NHS) due to lack of family time and childcare issues (husband also works shifts).
I am thinking of doing a Masters in Public Health or Computer Science as I am interested in a data career (clinical, if I can get it). I was looking at doing a PGCE but the cost of the PGCE is twice the price and I would end up at the bottom of the teacher payscale (£21K). I would be better off doing the MSc in PH/CS to get a higher salary.
As I would need to quit my role in the NHS to do this I would need to take out the maximum maintenance loan (£10k ish). I am trying to figure out how much and for how long I would pay it back. I will be 45 in March. Didn't have a student loan for my first degree.
Any ideas? Is it written off at any point?

Student loans are mainly for undergraduate courses: other sources of funding are usually more appropriate for study at Masters level. In particular, the NHS offers bursaries for Masters-level training for relevant professions, and this might be a route into a career dealing with clinical data.

You mention a PGCE: most teachers have very limited family time so I suspect that this move would make things worse for you, but if you sincerely want to be a teacher then I am confident that a bursary would be available for you.

If your first choice is to work with data, then why are you not considering a course in Statistics? There are also Masters-level courses in data science: I happen to know that the one at Lancaster University is excellent, but others are available.

barbarawright

Worth checking the Educational Grants Directory and anything else on grants your nearest large reference library has. There are grants available(some from local trusts) but you need to seek them out

cms-help

Don't become a teacher in the hope you will have lots of family time. I am a teacher. You will work evenings, most weekends and a lot of the "excessive" holidays (or so people tell me) we get!

Loans are payable into retirement but only if your pension exceeds the repayment limit. They are written off at a certain age. It's detailed here:

http://www.studentloanrepayment.co.uk/portal/page?_pageid=93,6678715&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

ViolaLass

I'm a teacher and I barely work at weekends. I'll probably do a day's work before term starts in Jan. I do work a bit in the evenings.

That said, I'm in my fifth year. For the first two years, I found it very difficult to spend any significant time with family.

Thing is though, do you actually want to be a teacher? It's not much fun if you don't. Have you observed any classes?

Depending on your degree and what you want to teach, there may be a lot of funding for you.

cms-help

ViolaLass wrote: »

I'm a teacher and I barely work at weekends. I'll probably do a day's work before term starts in Jan. I do work a bit in the evenings.

That said, I'm in my fifth year. For the first two years, I found it very difficult to spend any significant time with family.

Thing is though, do you actually want to be a teacher? It's not much fun if you don't. Have you observed any classes?

Depending on your degree and what you want to teach, there may be a lot of funding for you.

I'm not a new teacher but my school requires us to generate an awful lot of paperwork and I have a lazy TA (and I mean literally does nothing other than work with children in the class from 9 to 12 and leaves as soon as the children have gone for lunch). I had A LOT less to do in my first year at a different school. So I think it depends where you work.

What years do you teach Viola?

ViolaLass

cms-help wrote: »

I'm not a new teacher but my school requires us to generate an awful lot of paperwork and I have a lazy TA (and I mean literally does nothing other than work with children in the class from 9 to 12 and leaves as soon as the children have gone for lunch). I had A LOT less to do in my first year at a different school. So I think it depends where you work.

What years do you teach Viola?

I'm in secondary so I can't comment on primary. I'm also not claiming that my experience is universal, I'm just acting as a counterpoint to the 'it's always lots of work' claim. I can well believe that it depends on where you work.

Ed-1

Pension income doesn't actually count for repayment purposes, only earned income and unearned income (except from pensions and certain benefits) if it is over £2,000 and you are required to submit a tax return to HMRC. Otherwise if you don't submit a tax return, it's just employment income that counts, so most pensioners repay nothing even if their loan is still active through retirement.

The reason pension income doesn't currently count is that it counts as earned income before it went into the pension unless it's a salary sacrifice arrangement when it doesn't count going in or out!

MinnieCooper

Hi,

Thanks for the info. Yes, I have observed lessons in primary and secondary. I know quite a few teachers and some find it ok but others don't. I guess a lot depends on the school you work at.
I would prefer to build on my current experience within the NHS so public health (including statistics) but I am concerned about taking loans out at such a late stage. It does look like I could get a maintenance loan and tuition fees.

I am going to have a good look at a few universities and see what is out there.