Posted 22 March 2018

At Go Higher West Yorkshire we are dedicated to supporting young people and parents into Higher Education.  That’s why Higher Education Progression Officer James Kelly from Appleton Academy, alongside Roy Ward, our Outreach Officer from Bradford College organised the first in a series of workshops designed to allow parents and families to find out more about Higher Education to better support their young people.

James did a lot of work promoting the evening to parents from the school and organised catering for the event, and a very good number of parents and their young people attended on the night.  After some super tasty refreshments, the parents were asked to write on Post-it notes the topics they felt like they would like to know more about to support their young people with Higher Education. Most of the suggestions were related to Student Finance, although there were also notes asking for more information on explaining UCAS Points, organising accommodation, supporting young people to choose “the right course”, as well as one parent who wanted to know the best way to encourage their 14 year old son who is currently saying he doesn’t want to go to university.  One parent said the session completely reversed her own beliefs and she now felt university was something they could afford for her son.

This first session was themed around Student Finance, and was followed up with a Q&A session around both finance and general Higher Education topics. The next workshop is planned for the 24^th of May and will look at the UCAS application process as well as the range of HE courses available, based on the ideas suggested by the parents themselves.

This was the first in a series of workshops which will help to give important information to parents and families of young people in Wyke about Higher Education, and also to help to create better parental engagement with the school, which will hopefully be sustainable even beyond the end of the NCOP project.

For further information about student finance, check out some of our videos from our students!