No idea how to afford for DD to go uni

[Indoorvoicesbluey]

DD16 has wanted to be a Norland Nanny since she was 11. Her GCSEs were based on being a NN. She luckily passed them yesterday.

She decided against A levels and has started an apprenticeship at a local nursery. She absolutely loves it and makes good money for her age. She plans on saving £500 a month towards university.

Once she turns 19 she will do an Access to higher education and then go to Norland the following year at 20.

But the course is £18k a year for 3 years, plus £1000+ a month living costs. We are a “higher income” family but would still struggle to fund this. She will be entitled to the lower amount grants.

How do people afford it?! To top it off my DS will be
going uni the following year!!

Do you get a private loan? I’m thinking we are going to have to remortgage 😩

How do people afford it?!

We saved from pregancy test onwards for our DC Uni costs. It wasn’t without setbacks, due to a crisis, we had to cash in the savings when they were 11 and 13 and once back our feet, start over saving for their Uni costs again. The Gov had helpfully tripled the Uni fees around the same time too! Talk about double whammy.

But we prioritised it and got there in the end. I would suggest as well as your DC saving from working, that you should also save aggressively as well.

That's awful, being low income has no bearing on how good you may be at childcare, or the other interpersonal skills necessary to be a good Norland nanny.

But the Norland course is not a university course.

There are lots of private courses that are not supported by government loans.

There ate lots of other government supported options available.

Norland nannies are specifically aimed at serving the needs of the ultra rich. That’s why they often want someone who is “their type”. Anyone wanting to do the course is thinking primarily about the £££s because there are plenty of childcare courses elsewhere.

They don’t want a nanny to be “their type” as in a fellow ultra rich person or pedigree. They want a nanny to be of the respectable servant class, as they are “the help”.

But probably ideally went to boarding school and doesn’t have a strong regional accent and knows how to handle herself among rich folk. The majority of the royal family’s servants come from fairly well to do backgrounds. They don’t want someone from the local comp whose mum works in Tesco, as they won’t fit in. See eg William and Kate’s NN, fluent in four languages.

I agree they don’t want anyone from working class, but from respectable servant class which is sort of lower middle class.

The RF is different from ultra rich as royals have a long history of having titled gentry as servants for many key functions.

with regards to how do people afford it, we get a grant for the tuition fees but no student loan.

That means we have to find about £20,000 a year for our DC's uni.

In our case we received an inheritance which was supposed to be my pension, but which will now be used for the DC.

Without that we would have had to re-mortgage

Firstly well done to your daughter for her GCSEs!

She has a plan to save £6k per year. At 16 that is so impressive. Let's say she can do that during her access course year too, by hook or by crook. If she puts those earnings and a £6k pa loan towards an £18k pa tuition fee that leaves a shortfall of £6k pa on fees.

Consider living costs separately. Say as a starting point you cover her accommodation and she lives off her maintenance loan and anything she can earn. So between you, you have £6k pa plus housing costs left to cover. Students with min maintenance loan often do rely on their parents to cover housing costs, which is painful, but let's assume you are going to find that as you would for any uni place away from home.

One option is she takes an extra year out to work and saves as much as she can towards the remaining £6k per year. Students do this quite a bit in the USA - work for a while to save up funds for uni. If you could manage to give her, say, £2k per year towards fees or be guarantor while she tries to pay it through earnings as she goes instead, that would help.

Of course she could go non-Norland, but it sounds to me like she is up for taking a good amount of responsibility for this and prepared to work hard to pull it off. If you can't find the extra £6k plus contribution to her living costs, be upfront about it. She sounds very mature and between you, you will come up with something.

Be warned also the uniform is over a grand too! Hideous brown urgh!

Loads of teenagers have no idea what they want to do and she does so that's a good start. We used nannies when our children were young but not a Norland one. our first had a uniform from her nanny training place (not Norland) but she did not wear it for long and that was fine with us too - whatever she wanted was fine in terms of clothing. I am sure Norland fees are nothing to do with employers wanting nannies of a particular class - most people using a nanny get on well with them but they are not friends and class is not an issue. Hoewer you do want someone well trained who can cope with anything and there is very good training at Norland.

It looks from other posts as if £9250 student loan is available towards the annual £18k fees so that is half the fees covered but that still leaves the other half and the rent as well so I agree it is not cheap. Also will she get a place? It sounds like Norland expect people to do A levels. I don't know how competitive it is so perhaps do not put all the eggs in one basket and there are lots of ways people qualify to be very good nannies on high salaries and it does not have to be via Norland.

Good luck to her and well done on her GCSE results.

She decided against A levels

From what I’ve heard about Norland, people who can’t afford the fees and have no A levels aren’t the type they are hoping to recruit.

I don't have advice on the financial aspect of this, but I think people are being needlessly negative about your daughter's career prospects.

I have plenty of firsthand accounts of Norlanders who were able to find comfortable jobs with families who did NOT treat them like crap - contrary to popular belief, there are many out there who have both money and good sense/decency.

My DD is a Norland nanny. She took a leap of faith when going as didn’t have the funds to support her. But there is a lot of work available in term time (babysitting etc) which is very well paid and in holidays they work all over the world earning money. She was earning £1k plus a week during the summer which paid for the next year at Norland. A lot of work leads to more work.
She is now fully qualified and has worked for some fantastic families. The pay is very high too and she travels all over.

And although there are a lot of childcare courses. Many wealthy families who pay well, will only consider a Norland Nanny because of their training and reputation. Like any job really. They want and can afford the best.

This is a good point. The people who earn the most are those who were top students & they moved to norland nannying vs another top flight career.

Crazy money.
Better off on an apprenticeship I feel

Accommodation costs in Bath have risen hugely over the last few years. My daughter pays over £900 a month.

If your daughter is doing a level 3 apprenticeship, she may not need to do an access course unless required by Norland, as apprenticeships at level 3 are now equivalent to 2 A levels, but the number of Ucas points they are equivalent to, depends on the duration of the apprenticeship. www.ucas.com/apprenticeships/understanding-ucas-tariff-points

Zombie thread

A degree apprenticeship in Early Years will be introduced in the autumn, her employer may support her to do this especially if they are large. The NN route seems like a complete waste of money to me- not universally recognised or understood, way too expensive.

It's more about wanting nannies who were brought up in families with a similar lifestyle so that they know how to navigate that culture. It's not a reflection on personal qualities but on cultural knowledge.