Did your DC get any money from Turing ?

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DD is doing MFL degree and on her year abroad in France. Just been informed by her home university that she won't get anything from Turing.

Bit disappointing as her YA is mandatory and she only gets the minimum maintenance loan. Would have been good to get some help with visa, insurance and travel costs.

As I have said, it’s a government scheme. Universities don’t make the rules of eligibility for the funding.

It was part of the Tories’ levelling up policy, which is why it’s not limited to MFL degrees. It was about giving young people from low income families opportunities for study and travel they might not otherwise have had. Take it up with the Tories; don’t blame the universities. We don’t like it either.

There is a new govt now - a Labour one - so if they wanted to change it they could. They don’t and therefore they haven’t. So blame both govts.

Yes my DD got some money from Turing last year while in Paris for her YA for her French degree at Edinburgh University

I've just checked with DD (MFL) and she received her Turing award funds this month. They were fortunate in that her Uni do not means test the award but only provide it to those on compulsory years abroad ie Linguists. I think DD said if the Uni don't get enough funds from Turning scheme the Uni top it up themselves.

@Juja But she’s at Oxford! They are rich. They possibly don’t have many going to Australia in the middle of their degrees either. Not sure their degrees lend themselves to this as many subjects like sport and finance aren’t taught. My argument supports the Oxford view though. Spend money where it’s compulsory, not just nice to do. It’s morally wrong that some universities are so much more generous than others for the same degree and other students are clearly at a disadvantage. Glad she’s actually got to Italy though after all the entry issues!

Those who means test, what sort of levels do they look at, income wise? We are on about 65k household income but have 2 at uni so the more help the better. Mfl student at Durham.

@HPFA as someone who did a few months of Erasmus uni study with a few months of au pairing in another country MANY years ago, I'm sort of shocked you now have to do a graduate-level role, especially given how much harder it is to find a role (any role) post Brexit, as well as the fact that so many linguists do multiple languages so need to split their YA. Short-term graduate roles for non-EU passport holders can't be ten a penny 😳

@senorsenor They are all different! Some it’s max loan students only, but others are more generous. I think your student should speak to the year abroad office (or similar) and ask what happened this year. Many are prioritising disadvantaged students for any time abroad, not MFL where it’s mandatory.

@DidntHaveTheLatin I think the more academic university courses where dc do, say 2 MFLs, haven’t wanted restaurant or au pair jobs for a while. DD didn’t look for a grad level job but the university would have approved office work and certainly British Council work was the other popular option. Making coffee - definite no.

Any dc doing more than 2 MFLs is compromised on the year abroad anyway. Very short time and no university for three. With jobs hard to come by it’s better to stick to 2 MFLs and do them well. Visas for 3 would be horrendous! Many good universities have links with universities abroad and this helps with options but some universities are so popular, there’s competition for places. Nothing is easy is it?!!

@OhDear111 you are right Oxford is in the unusual position of having funds to top up so all MFL students have the same funding as Turing offers if there is a shortfall from government .

My DD with her Italian visa is allowed to work 20 hrs so that helps. Bizarrely there is no minimum wage in Italy and she's refused to be a waitress on €8 an hour. She has found a babysitting job for about 8+ hrs a week for parents who want their 12 month old baby to be exposed to English. That pays the princely sum of €12 an hour and she had to push up from €10. Anyway it pays for her food and a few drinks each week. (Not quite the £180,000 a year as advertised in the UK press last week to tutor some poor one year old to get into Eton.)

@OhDear111 Oxford which I would count as an academic university as I've mentioned before doesn't care at all what you do as long as you came back with at least C1 Level in your foreign language. To be more accurate they don't care at all about you - Out of sight - out of mind!!

I always find it odd when people say you can work but can't be in a coffee shop as loads of language students are British Council Language Assistants and that doesn't help your foreign language much. You might learn more of your foreign language as a waitress.

@Juja The coffee shop was just an example of serving coffee all day and not engaging with anyone regarding language acquisition. So just taking an order wasn’t seen as enough. Perhaps at some universities it is - needs must? However when compared to a very good uni course, it’s a bit lightweight. I think that was the point! Wages in Italy aren’t great are they?

I agree that it's sometimes the more apparently entry-level jobs that can really bring on language skills on a YA. I had a friend living in Paris and working at one of the big banks in La Defence but from how she described it, it was such an international team that everyone spoke English at work anyway 😁

I was at Durham - pretty academic - and they didn't give a hoot what I was doing! This was over 20yrs ago though - interested to know what the parameters there are now, if anyone has any experience?

I think it's utterly ridiculous. Why wouldn't working as an au pair improve your French anyway, especially as you have to take French classes as a visa requirement? I guess there's a risk of the family wanting you to speak English to the kids all the time, but being a language assistant also requires working In English and if you go to a uni you could also choose to spend all your time with other international students.

There's a shortage of MFL teachers yet we're discouraging students from undertaking MFL degrees. Madness.

DD actually does have an EU passport (Irish) but I doubt her level of French would allow her to compete for these graduate level jobs - she started her degree as a beginner rather than post A-Level. She's told me that at least one of the fourth years at her uni worked as an au pair so it might be her uni allows it - one advantage of going to a non-RG I suspect! 😂

Birmingham Uni has this on its website:

Bar work or acting as an au pair, for example, is not acceptable.

I can't for the life of me work out why you'd practice more of a foreign langauge teaching English all day than working in a bar. Your interactions with the customers might have vocabulary limitations but chatting and socialising with your colleagues wouldn't.

I don't know the new Turing scheme at all but it sounds a bit like the Erasmus scheme. That wasn't guaranteed when I was at uni as a MFL student. I got it but friends did not. So probably the same deal - only limited funds per uni or course to share around.

Pissed off with UoN but DD loves it there and is enjoying her French uni so I'll just have to get over it.

I think many of us agree that the Year Abroad experience post Brexit is currently far from satisfactory. This especially applies to MFL students who have a requirement to learn the language as part of their course - family finances shouldn't be a barrier to studying a MFL.

If your uni has good bilateral agreements with Universities in Europe then that helps enormously getting a visa. I think each EU country has sightly different rules about how many hours you can work on a student visa but it's roughly 20hrs/week.

DD1 currently on year abroad - not in Europe. Hasn’t received yet but is expecting to. Around £3,000. I remember her saying that Edinburgh university sort it out for them? I may not have remembered that properly 😁

@HPFAI think it’s perhaps to do with staff interaction in a school and of course there’s the MFL spoken to students as well. Anyway it’s not
unusual to find what Birmingham say.

@TheLette I think the vast majority got Erasmus funding though. It wasn’t means tested so don’t know why a time did not get it unless they did not apply?

For DD’s year abroad, she was told for work it had to be a ‘white collar job’ , not bar work or au pair.

She got a six month internship at a media company in Paris which was paid and then an unpaid internship for an art gallery.
Brexit has made it harder as you now need a visa for working/living over 90 continuous days in Europe.

Having experienced both, it really isn’t.

Not in my university. The number of Erasmus places available seemed quite small. I think there were only 5 or 6 available for 100 or so students. I don't think it was means tested; I think the staff selected students based on exam results so far.

@TheLette When was this? Certainly when dd was at university everyone got it for year abroad. How did poor people go then if only 6/100 got it? Borrow money for the air fare? Did they all get work?

From a Government briefing paper in 2018, Erasmus started in 1987. 3200 students from the uk went to 11 countries. The scheme grew to 19,000 doing HE and work training in 2018. More students came here. Before 1987, it wasn’t Erasmus funding.

Without giving exact info - circa 2004 and a top-rated, large and established London uni. We were all MFL students. I don't know how students from poorer backgrounds did it, but loans were much more affordable back then so I expect they got a loan just like everyone else. There was probably a separate hardship fund for people who couldn't cover costs via a loan. We had to have a year abroad so I guess people took that into account when choosing a language degree (which is 4 years rather than 3), and you could live somewhere much cheaper for that year versus London, after all.

I think I had lower tuition fees (technically a lower income background) but I don't think that was why I got the Erasmus funding. Tbf it was never explained to me but I had strong exam results and won academic prizes, so I assumed it was due to that. I didn't even realise the Erasmus places were sought after until after I got one, as some of the other students were annoyed.