Founded in 1921 as a living memorial for people who had made sacrifices during the First World War, the University of Leicester from Year 1 to Year 100 has been a university dedicated to supporting students in making the transition into higher education easy whether it be from a battlefield or from college. This is why at the University of Leicester we are especially committed to supporting students from care backgrounds prior to starting their course, throughout their studies and post-graduation.
Prior to starting your course, our Outreach team work tirelessly to provide young people opportunities to experience higher education in order to broaden horizons and support career planning. We offer activities such as summer schools, subject taster days and university campus visits. Additionally, we run two year progression programmes to allow young students to receive high quality guidance and advice so that they may reach their full academic potential. These progression programmes prioritise the inclusion of young people in care so that they may get the best support possible. As well as this, we also facilitate individual sessions for young people where appropriate, working closely with local authority virtual schools, colleges and other organisations to target and select students effectively. All of our pre-16 outreach activities can be found here and our post-16 activities can be found here.
Once at university we guarantee to provide enhanced financial, educational and pastoral support to care leaver students so that they can have the best university experience possible. We will provide a named contact in the student welfare service, offering advice and guidance on student finance, accommodation, careers and other transitional support.
If you are a care leaver under 25 you may be eligible to receive the University of Leicester’s bursary for care leavers which is currently £2000 per academic year (2020/21). For more information, you can visit our scholarships and bursaries webpage.
Additionally, we offer care leavers 365 days access to our university accommodation and offer pastoral support from our dedicated student residential advisors in their accommodation site on request.
For more information about the University of Leicester or to find out when our next events are, please visit: www.le.ac.uk