to think if you want a new qualification get on benefits!!

[TheFeministParent]

WEll not really but I have just learned a cousin of mine, after leaving her partner and taking her three dcs to live in one of the roughest estates in England (another story), has just started a degree course. As a single parent of three living in a HA house she's allowed govt help to get educated...which is great, we should support people who want to educate themselves out of poverty. However I would love to do a bit of post grad study whilst my dcs are at home (in evenings) but I can't afford it, literally have nowhere to make savings...it will make me more employable following a HUGE break to have dcs.

So why can't I get help? I have as little disposable income as my cousin.

Why on earth are you ribbiting on about this woman's personal circumstances anyway?! When I fill in my funding form I just ask the benefit officer to stamp it, I don't fill in info about my personal life!

I am also wondering why your degree means you can't work now. My dad did a geography degree at Cambridge, for fun really, he's never used it but no way would he expect help if he were to study again. Likewise if I decide I want another degree, or postgraduate other than PGCE, I will accept that I have to fund it myself. You have to think carefully about what degree you do and what job you want - you pays your money (or indeed accept the ONE lot of funding allocated) and you takes your choice IMO - in my first year of OU I took one psychology course as well in order to keep my options open and make sure I was really set on doing maths.

This is why the government made a massive mistake pushing half the kids to uni. There were loads of ridiculous courses invented just so people could do a degree for the sake of it, and they won't do anything for a future career.

"with DH working away for four weeks out of the next six getting a job isn't an option. I have two dcs not yet at school"

why does this prevent you from working? I worked for 4 years as a single parent. so dh away or at home ever at all!!!

Okay....so one of my choices is NOT to put my dcs in childcare. I am thinking a little mopre long term. I have two very good business ideas but not exactly enough experience to put them into practice, I would like to retrain to make at least one of these business ideas a reality.

This thread was meant to be about funding for me, it's a side issue really that help is available if you're already claiming benefits. I, of course, would much rather be in my relatively easy position than the other woman mentioned.

Have you looked into what funding you would be eligible for? e.g. university scholarships, or studentships funded by the research councils or charitable trusts? This is the usual way to get funding for postgraduate courses. Failing that people usually take out a career development loan, and/or study part-time while working to support themselves.

Funding for you = A LOAN!!

No govt bursaries for PGCEs Prolesworth, although I am in Scotland so maybe different?

TFP if you are thinking of starting your own bbusiness what about a small business start up loan? Then you can do business training etc at nights as you go along!

Currently, depending on subject, you get a maintenance loan of £4, 6 or 9 thousand to do a PGCE. You have a loan for fees though. There are other, additional funds for people with caring responsibilities. The PGCE is treated very differently to other postgrad qualifications.

We probably already have too many people doing other posgrad qualifications anyway, so I doubt the Government will fund more.

I thought there was a bursary for PGCEs - there certainly was a few years ago when I was considering doing one! Plus a 'golden hello' once you start working.

People do keep putting that point to the OP, but she hasn't explained why she is a particularly suitable candidate for funded postgrad study.

"This thread was meant to be about funding for me, it's a side issue really that help is available if you're already claiming benefits. I, of course, would much rather be in my relatively easy position than the other woman mentioned".

then why did you raise the other woman mentioned in your op then?

maybe you should have posted under education requesting info about funding for your self, giving your own circumstances, and not that of your of the other woman mentioned?

Wow, and bankers describe taxing the (tax-payer funded) rich as "the politics of envy". They've got nothing on this!

Come across an astonishing vein of disabled envy, too, since being sick: "I'd like to sit on my arse all day," sort of thing. Truly wow.

the other woman is totally irrelevant to funding for you.

As once she's done her under graduate degree she'll be in exactly the same position as you are - with a degree and no funding for a post grad - even if she's still on benefits.

OP, there is funding available for postgraduate study. It's nothing to do with benefits.

If you know what course you want to do, tell us/google, and you'll be able to find out what funding might be available and how to apply for it.

For some courses, the funding will be around equivalent to minimum wage, for some (generally engineering/science), it will be more than that. You might also find individual universities have bursary schemes (awarded by merit) that could pay part of the way.

If you're a single parent, you won't have to pay council tax and if you live with your partner, s/he will get a 25% reduction on his/her council tax. So take that into consideration when you look at funding possibilities.

What Baroq said.

What on earth has some random woman's life choices got to do with you not getting postgrad funding?

Cop on, love.

You're conflating three issues that have nothing to do with one another.

1. You think this woman is a bad parent.

2. This woman is being funded to take a first degree - as were you.

3. You are resentful that the state won't pay towards your taking a second degree.

I sympathise with the last point somewhat, though. Seems a bit hard that a choice made at 18 effectively bars a drastic change of career path for lots of people on a permanent basis. The desire to avoid funding perpetual students makes sense, but surely people should be able to apply for support on a discretionary basis, and if a good career argument can be made, they could then be funded? I know an English teacher who is now head of dep't and rated Outstanding by OFSTED. But she had to put herself through an English degree in her late 20s before she could take the PGCE, as she had an earlier degree in an unrelated (unhelpful) subject. If she'd had kids, she couldn't have done it, as she had to work full time, in anti-social hours, to pay for it.

Wait, you want a post-grad degree? Not a different BA? Because yes, there is funding available, you just have to compete for it. Nobody gets standard state funding for post-grad unless it's in some way deemed socially useful to the state, but lots of us manage to get funded in other ways.

She says she wants to do post grad study in the OP - is that not right?

Well, post grad retrain, whatever! I just want to ensure that when my dcs are at school I have enough training to make a decent living! I am not equipped to start either business idea without it.

The random woman was the reason that I thought about it all. Long story short: I considered my options and capability to earn, realise that I've been out of work for too long and don't have enough knowledge to start my own business, but plenty of ideas. Whilst pondering over the dilemma of my choices that have lead me here, a mutual friend had commented about the 'random woman's' new course. That's all.

mamtomany you have to be old enough for that to be possible, or fully estranged from your parents. And if you're married your spouse's income is always taken into account unless you also have a dependent child of the family as an assessed student, themselves.

Can be bloody unfair, that. One case I know of, the husband had a 6 figure salary, they had a daughter at uni, and as a direct result of their daughter also being a student the wife, who hadn't got a job, was assessed on her own income as if a single woman... and got full entitlement to everything going, including Parental Learning Allowance for their dependant DS (still school age) as well. And she was doing a Fine Art degree for fun, with no plans to work afterwards, so her loans were no such thing, in actuality.

They spent the money on a holiday to the Seychelles. Told people so, as they thought it quite hilarious. Now that is a loophole worth getting annoyed over. Not someone on benefits getting loans.

feminist, the problem is that funding for postgrad degrees is done differently from funding for another degree at the same level.

So unfortunately, if you already have a degree, you won't get funding to do another undergraduate degree unless it's in something like medicine (for which there is some help available).

There are lots of postgrad. courses out there that could be useful, though.

Do you have some sense of what you want to study, or what you want to get from the studying?