Posted 1 December 2017

Will Atkinson, the NCOP Outreach Officer at Leeds Beckett University, returned to Elliott Hudson College by popular demand to deliver a presentation to Y13 parents about student finance.

The presentation gave lots of useful and local information about student finance and the real cost of attending university. Will was great at presenting a realistic overview of student finance, by showing that while university is expensive, the loans and repayment system mean it is affordable for all who wish to attend. The breakdowns of what it costs to live in Leeds were particularly useful in terms of giving both students and their parents an idea of how far students need to stretch their maintenance loan at university, and highlighting that for many students, they will need to subsidise their loan by working alongside their studies.

The purpose of the evening was to inform Y13 students and more importantly their parents about student finance, as well as demystifying the system and how it works. Student finance is one of the things that puts most people off attending university, and therefore it is important for parents to gain a realistic and concrete understanding of how it works, and more specifically how it will impact their son/daughter and their financial future.

The evening was full of really useful and relevant information about student finance, and feedback for the evening was overwhelmingly positive, with 100% of parents who attended having rated the presentation “good”, “very good” or “excellent”. 88% of those who attended said that the evening had helped them and their son/daughter in terms of making decisions regarding university.

Some comments from parents on what they found useful were:

“Good answer to questions & good helpful power point”

“Very clear & the information was structured well”

“Precise estimations of figures”

“Extremely useful.  Helped clarify that there is an earnings gap between grant & expenditure”