As parents and carers you play a vital role in the education of your child and we believe it is essential that we work together to ensure their college experience is the best that it can be. This page is full of links and information we think you will find useful.
Our Parent Handbook covers everything from a student’s first few days at college to the support for their wellbeing that is available throughout their time at Priestley.
Go Priestley is our student handbook, your child should have received their copy in their enrolment pack. It contains everything they need to know to make a good start.
Student Performance is monitored through the year and you will be updated on your child’s progress during their time at Priestley. Details about Performance Monitoring above.
Parent guides to education
Priestley Plus is a series of activities, clubs, workshops and societies that are designed to enrich every student’s college experience. All students are expected to take at least one Priestley Plus activity.
The Personal Development Programme is a compulsory part of every student’s timetable and will help them develop the life skills they need in order to progress both at college and beyond.
The Priestley Skills Builder allows students to build and develop transferrable skills which will be useful for their future in higher education or apprenticeships and also in the workplace.
Priestley has a Wellbeing Team dedicated to ensuring our students keep well during their time at college and support is also available from Progress Tutors who are a student’s first port of call for certain issues.
Your child's attendance matters
Please support us in ensuring that your son/daughter attends college to our expected levels.
A national survey revealed that students with an attendance rate of 95% or higher are more likely to achieve grades at A or B, while those with lower attendance rates are more likely to fall behind academically. 17 Nov 2023.
- When attendance improves the likelihood of achieving your qualifications by the end of college also massively increases.
- Over 60% of students with attendance above 95% in Year 13 achieved their qualifications with at least the grades they expected, or even better.
- Only 36% of students who were persistently absent (below 90%) passed their qualification with the grades they expected.
Reporting informed absence
- Please contact the College via email at studentabsences@priestley.ac.uk
Or call our attendance phone line on 01925 633591 first thing in morning of the day of absence
- Absence in term time – there should not be any planned absences in term time. If you have a special request for absence, you will need to write to request authorisation from the College Principal
When to contact a Progress Tutor
If you have any reasons to be concerned about your son/daughter, please contact their Progress Tutor in the first instance. This also includes any worries about performance and achievement as well as their wellbeing. The Progress Tutor will be able to either support, or ensure the correct person receives the information on your behalf.
Communications
At Priestley we communicate with our students and parents/carers via email, text and hard copy letters. If you normally do not use your email regularly, please make it a habit to check it regularly. We will be sending you attendance and performance data and reports at regular intervals throughout the academic year.
This includes your son/daughters progress report each half term. Please see the Progress timeline further down this page. We also email half term attendance letters, so you can see individual subject and PDP attendance as well as overall attendance.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM US
WHAT WE EXPECT FROM YOU
Questions and answers from the Parents' Information Evening
These are done initially in the summer of the first year with an outline reference and then ‘tidied up’ at the start of the second year in the light of results. UNIFROG does have some issues which preclude a small number of students having their references entered. In this case staff will hold these in another format. Progress/personal tutors collate references onto the UCAS form and these are then checked a number of times before we send them.
When students are happy and have discussed with their tutors they will press the button labelled REVIEW AND SUBMIT on their application. This alerts us that they are ready to send. We do final checks and once we are happy we then send through to UCAS. They only pay once for their application not each time they resend it. Applications do not actually go to UCAS until we send them from our checking team.
This depends. Some universities make offers based on grades in three A Levels (say AAA), in which case no AS grades do not ‘count’, neither do any additional qualifications, except possible Extended Project but that would be figured into the offer, so they might reduce it to AAB for a student with a strong EPQ. Other universities make offers based on UCAS points. These may accept AS Levels or they may not. If you search the relevant course on the UCAS website it will show the accepted qualifications. As a general rule most do not. We do not sit AS Levels to gain points, more for vital experience of A Level exams and to allow students to study 4 A Levels initially.
There is not a college section of the personal statement, but we do provide a reference. The personal statement is the students’ own. We would recommend the following in terms of the restricted characters:
- Make it about 75% about their academic achievements and about 25% personal
- In the academic section don’t dwell on the courses studied as the unis know about these, make it about the things that make them stand out – additional work they have done, areas of study which really interested them and why, extra books they have read, podcasts followed, etc.
In the first instance the personal or progress tutors work with them. There is extensive material on Google Classroom with advice. Also whenever possible I invite university representatives in to check or they can submit them to contacts we have via myself to be checked over by university representatives. They are encouraged to also discuss with relevant subject tutors as well and they are welcome to see myself or Ian if they want further advice.
Almost all of our applications are successful, in the last full data set (2020) 98% of our UCAS applicants received university offers. It might be better to focus on the nature of the application so we can match the requirements of your son/daughter in terms of a successful application. So, for example, they might want to apply to Oxford or Cambridge, to the Russell Group more generally (last year 14% of our students went to a Russell Group university), they might want to apply to a performing arts course, a sports course etc. If your son/daughter comes to see me I can find something that meets their needs.
It does and this can be seen on the UCAS tariff points calculator where students can enter their qualifications or predicted grades to see their total UCAS points. https://www.ucas.com/ucas/tariff-calculator
The cost is as follows:
For one application (i.e. applying to one university for one course) = £22.00
For two to five applications (i.e. between two and five courses, possibly at five universities, although you can apply for multiple courses at the same university) = £26.50
Students can only apply for a maximum of five courses.
They can apply for up to five courses in their initial UCAS application. They can decide for themselves how ambitious to be. We always suggest at least one aspirational one and at least one that they should be comfortably able to achieve. Once they receive replies and hopefully five offers they will then pick a firm offer – the one they will go to if they get the grades, plus an insurance offer – one that should, ideally, be lower which they can fall back on if they do not meet the entry requirements for their chosen firm.
Both before and after results there are opportunities for students who do not receive any offers, or any they are happy with, or who do not meet the entry requirements of their firm and/or insurance offers to make further applications. There are systems called EXTRA and Clearing+ which allow more options if required.
Our tutors are aware of which students have which specific needs and will tailor their support to match these. We are happy to provide facilities in the Base for students to work on their applications. If students require anything additional they should not hesitate to ask. In terms of declarations to universities it is important to be honest, tutors will not declare anything in our references without the student’s agreement but we encourage students with additional needs to be honest with universities who will not discriminate and giving full details will help them to plan provision and make decisions on who to make offers to.
At present, assuming nothing changes, it will be on Thursday 18th August 2022.
They will each do their own application and be treated individually by ourselves and UCAS.
This depends. If the student is estranged from their family and, therefore, cannot expect any support then they are treated differently to those who are not estranged who will be assessed against household income. Household income includes parent(s)/carer(s) and any none parent/carer partner. It does not include siblings’ earnings.
All the details of how loans are calculated can be found at https://www.gov.uk/student-finance there are documents and explanations of how calculations are made, what is taken into account, etc. If you have very unusual circumstances and cannot find an answer I am happy to contact our designated officer at Student Loans to get an answer for you.
Yes, in effect the loans are not paid back as a traditional loan would be. Whatever the amount the payback is levied at 9% of income over the minimum earnings (£27,295 p/a currently). So the amount paid back is not dependent on the amount borrowed but on the income of the borrower. Repayments continue at this level until either; the loan is paid off, or; 30 years elapse when the remainder is written off. Also in the tragic event that a borrower sadly died the loans do not transfer to their estate and are written off.
