cricketman

Yes that is how it works. You effectively pay 9% on what you earn over £22k per year

Below is an excellent guide

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/stu...fees-changes#3

The most important point as that the majority of graduates will never earn enough to pay off their student loan, so in effect this is just an extra 9% tax on income for those who earn over £21k for the first 30 years of working after uni

The other astounding fact is that you would have to earn £170,000 per year at the end of the 30 years to be able to have paid off the entire loan, and with interest, you would have paid £107k off an initial £27k loan. Bear in mind that wages havent increased in real terms over the past 10 years

Its still an absolute scandal, but it seems that this will hit successful high earning graduates a lot more than anyone else

rebs

Yes - as I said effectively a graduate tax..

Martin Lewis has also written a blog post on why it's not called a graduate tax (and perhaps should be)... http://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/20...ional-tragedy/

kayley

We my kids were at uni, just a few years ago, they did have to pay tuition up front. The student loan was given in two parts. The part for the tuition fees was paid directly to the uni. The rest to the student to be repaid later when they are earning enough.

If the loan was late in being paid, the uni chased the student for payment.

While apprenticeships are a great idea, the pay is very low. Generally less than the minimum wage. This is when the apprentice is living at home, but it is very difficult when rent and everything else has to be paid out of it. Particularly if there is no overtime.

I have a son doing one at the moment and he just can't survive on his wage. Luckily for him, his working hours are 8.00an till 6.00pm, leaving him the time to do bar work as well. Not easy though when his bar shifts don't end until 3.00am.

Lynn R

My nephew is in the second year of his apprenticeship with British Telecom (on the IT side). He started originally on over £10,000 pa and has since had a pay rise. He does live at home, but I would imagine the majority of 18 year olds who are not at university do. When he got the apprenticeship, I looked up some details about them and came across an article from the Daily Telegraph which said there was more competition for good quality apprenticeships now than there is for Oxbridge places (that is, more applications per place available), and I'm not surprised. He spends one week in every four at their own training college and will have a degree at the end of his apprenticeship, being paid at the same time. Beats ending up 40K in debt every time, IMO.

fionamw

I'm now even more confused - if you reach as far as taking and hopefully passing some IGCSEs - you'd be British or any other nationality including the majority Spanish in the case of 10 yo's international school - what is the age of choice for opting into Bachi and how many years would you have to do to succeed down that route prior to uni?


I do recognise that much of what I'm mulling over here is in the way of thinking out loud, to be asked of our head but as I said before, any and all input is gratefully received!

Domino

that is very good for an apprenticeship, there are many adults people in the UK working a full day for similar or not much more, some with quite responsible jobs.

salaries are a big bone of contention and even in "good" companies the levels of salary can be all over the place.
I know a guy in his 40's who works hard on a split shift in a company mail room, helping to ensure cost effective mail distribution, continually helping people and moving heavy goods who is paid not much more than your nephew but less than the 19yo girl sitting on reception who's only duties other than meeting and greeting is telephoning for a taxi when needed and tidying up the newspapers.
But then I keep on telling him he should wear short skirts, and wear dropped neck tight tee-shirts that show off his chest to better advantage.

`

cricketman

Receptionists will always get paid more that mailroom sorters, and so they should!

A receptionist is a face of the company, a mailroom guy is faceless unskilled manual labour

Nowadays many receptionsits to the corporates will be graduates, so they have to pay off their uni debts, and they may even speak several languages

Pocaloca

What an outrageous comment! I can't believe you just said that.

The "faceless manual workers" are just as important to a company as the ones the public see. Try doing without them and see what happens!

cricketman

Thats a very silly argument. People get paid depending on how easy their skills are to replace

It is only fair that people are rewarded for their talent. A good receptionist is more skilled than someone who can put the correct post in the right boxes - which anyone with a half functioning brain can do

steviedeluxe

Unfortunately you are both right. It may have been the "faceless manual workers" who made the company successful by producing the goods. But in the future the work will either be outsourced or done by robots/software... The people still in work will be the sales and marketing bods - annoying because some of us have zero skills in that field.

ddtown

Pretty sure it's 4 years, all the courses I looked at were.

rachelk

We'd miss the binmen far more than the lawyers if they both went on strike.

Pocaloca

You haven't worked in a mail-room, have you! I've done both jobs when I was temping and believe me reception is a piece of cake in comparison to the mail room. You wouldn't believe how many ways there are of getting a contract to the other side of the world the next day, and you are supposed to know all of them off by heart and how much they cost!

steviedeluxe

I've also worked in a mail room (for a major UK publishing company). To be honest we had preferred couriers for different tasks (eg in the UK, in Europe etc) and when we sent stuff out we used the machines provided by the courier company to produce the franking, and then the courier employee (well often they worked freelance) arrived to pick up the days deliveries. There was no need to know any pricing - the machine did it all automatically.
The hardest part was dealing with incoming mail - you were expected to remember which department someone worked in, even if they'd left the company 6 months before!

cricketman

A bit like a waiter remembering some orders then, except you dont need the presentation and client service skills