Posted 17 November 2020

GHWY and the Post-16 team at Immanuel College teamed up to deliver our first online parents’ session last week using Microsoft Teams. We divided the event into three sections – a (kind of…) fun quiz from me on what parents already knew about university and applications, a session on using the UCAS Hub from our Post-16 UCAS leader Cate Blake and a session on university finance from our Post-16 leader Sarah Swales.

Doing the session online worked well apart from the strange technical glitch that the parents’ questions couldn’t be seen in the chat box until after the session was over! I copied the questions into an email and responded to the questions the next day. As I have found in the past, parents are most full of questions (when you can eventually see them!) about finance, obviously an area of interest and concern.

We had 25 parents on the session, plus three who couldn’t join us asked for the PowerPoints to be sent on to them.

 

Some brief feedback was –

What was useful about session?

It gave an understanding of the finance side of going to university.

It explained some of the common jargon terms around university applications.

It was really useful to see the resources available to be able to research the various different courses – it is a long time since I went to university and there was nothing like that then 😊

It was very useful to get an idea of the finance side of things particularly with regard to personal finances and living expenses.  We are a couple of years away from this yet but it is good to start thinking about saving for the future to be able to help out with expenses etc. well in advance.

 

Even better if…

Maybe a session on what/how to apply for courses. It is a bit bewildering the number of courses available.

Maybe a little more on higher level apprenticeships and the scope of them.

 

Joanne Welding

HEPO

Immanuel College