La consulta previa como democracia directa y participativa

Interviewees reported that schools and colleges emphasised type of university and type of course as the key factors in deciding on study in HE:

Louise (SA SS): I’ve noticed a lot of the teachers helped the other students who don’t know what they want to do at university, or where to go, because I guess they haven’t got …. Well, like my parents gave me the league tables and gave me stuff to look through whereas they’ve been more on their own. But the teachers have helped them a lot really.

Information about financial support was very limited:

Interviewer: Do the college give you any information on that kind of thing [finance]? Alice (SD SS, Interview 2): Not so much on finance… it’s been more about actually trying to choose a university rather than thinking about finance.

And:

Andy (SA SS, Interview 1): No, it’s kind of like you’re doing your A levels, you’re aiming to go to university and I think they just assume that you’d get it when you go to the open days.

And:

Interviewer: So given that you haven’t really actually made any active choices about looking for information on financial cost and all that kind of thing, is there anything that you feel that could have been given to you that you haven’t had?

Tom (SA SS): On the financial side the school hasn’t given us much information.

This is consistent with the rather low percentages of students in Table 4 indicating that they had received information about financial support through their school or college. However, when an institution or a teacher did provide advice on finance available it was usually taken very seriously by students:

Holly (Interview 2): Yeah, my mum and dad went to that [activity at the school]. You see before we were clueless and that really helped us…

Interviewer: So have you had all your information about finance from that evening? Holly: Yeah.

And:

Interviewer: So what sort of information has your tutor given you?

Alice (SD SS, Interview 2): Well, she was just talking about money and things and they said I would probably be better to stay at [name of local university] if I felt that I’m worried about money, obviously with debt and things.

When information on finance was provided it tended to focus on personal money management rather than on the implications of the range of choices open to students:

Interviewer: You know the talk that the people gave, where there was the stuff about finance, did they fill you in on any information around that [costs of studying at different universities]?

Holly (Interview 2): They did a little bit. It was just like a presentation saying ‘Oh, you might spend this much on your phone for a month and then you’ve got like, you

know, food costs’. Just giving advice saying you know, ‘Try markets and stuff. Just where to get your stuff from to save money.

Information on financial support also tended to be provided late in the year after choice of course and institution had been largely settled. For example, some Urban Area A schools and colleges provided talks by student loan advisors. Similarly, one institution provided information for Year 13 pupils in April on bursaries and how these differ by institution. Providing such information late in the year may encourage students and their parents to think of finance as something to consider after they have made their decision about which university to attend. This may be very suitable for those students for whom finance is not an issue, but for students who need extra advice or financial support it may create problems.

There was some variation in experience that could be associated with the type of institution attended. Interviews with independent school students indicated that finance was less of a focus for the school. Students had access to a careers advice team, interviews with the head and support from teachers, but the emphasis was very much on elite universities and subjects rather than finance. This could potentially isolate or disadvantage some students who are less financially well off as there appeared to be relatively little finance related advice:

Interviewer: Did your school give you any information on bursaries?

Simon (Interview 2): No. That’s not a problem really. I mean I think there’s quite a lot of actually kids who, obviously no one here’s not privileged, but there are quite a lot of people who are less so than others, but I think that’s kind of a failing point really because I mean I know that we could do with a helping hand with people just saying ‘Well here’s your options so we can see what there is’. I know there’s a fair few other people who are on assisted places as well who just at least want to know if you have the options. It would be pretty useful because as it is for us it’s pretty confusing just trying to fill in that finance form ’cause obviously we’ve never gone through that sort of thing before. The school, its kind of part of their, y’know developing you, helping out with the uni’ stuff so that could have been something that we could have done with.

Very few students referred to Connexions in relation to financial information or appeared to have spoken to their Connexions Personal Adviser in relation to HE decision-making overall. State school pupils appeared to have had little contact with careers education guidance staff, whilst almost all the students from further education colleges interviewed had spoken to the head of the careers department there.

3.3 TO WHAT EXTENT DO STUDENTS TAKE THE AVAILABILITY OF