The Parent Student

Parents’ Learning Allowance

You may be eligible for a Parents’ Learning Allowance to help with living expenses while you study.  This allowance is a non-repayable grant available to Parent Students with low household incomes –  for the current academic year the maximum grant is £1,470. Consult the directgov website for more information.

Financial help for undergraduate parent students

Parents who decide to embark on a higher education course may be eligible for various grants, bursaries and loans according to their number of dependants and household income. You can download a pdf document from the directgov website which describes these in detail. Below is an overview of the help available:

Government Maintenance Grant

A government maintenance grant may be available to students from England in full-time higher education. Government grants are means tested, so if your household income is low you may be eligible for either the Maintenance Grant or the Special Support Grant. It is important to note that if your application for a Maintenance Grant is [...]

Is there ever a convenient time to start a family?

One of the best kept secrets in life (which many do not discover until it is too late) is this: there is almost never a convenient time to start a family. The current cultural wisdom in Western societies advocates the following order: school, university, possibly a year or so of travel, then ten years or [...]

Your children are more likely to get a degree too

According to a study in the journal Research in Higher Education in the US, “first-generation” students (ie those whose parents did not go to Uni) were 71% more likely to drop out in the first year than those with two graduate parents. In fact an international study (reviewed here) has found that parental education is [...]