Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University students can apply for maintenance loans yearly to cover their rent.

However, a new analysis has revealed that even the maximum loans cannot cover students living in Oxford.

The analysis which covered 32 university cities, revealed Oxford is one of 17 where the maintenance loan does not cover the average rent.

Instead, students living in Oxford are £113 short each week.

Cities leaving students even worse off is Bristol, Guildford, Bath and London.

Oxford is one of the most expensive university cities to pay rent in (Image: Supplied)

Meanwhile, the cities leaving students with extra money leftover after paying their rent is Sheffield, Plymouth, Swansea and Lincoln.

The maximum means-tested loan is set at two rates: £14,135 for students living away from home in London, and £10,830 everywhere else.

Average weekly rents on the My Student Halls platform range from £138 in Sheffield to £427 in London, a spread of more than three times.

A standard UK undergraduate maintenance loan is calculated to cover a 30 to 39-week academic year, depending on your course and year of study.

My Student Halls founder, Dan Roberts, has advised students to check the contract lengths when booking if they want to save money.

He said: “Half the contracts on our platform are 51-week lets, not the 44 weeks people assume, so students are paying rent through the summer whether they are living there or not. On a £300 room, that is over £2,000 of difference, and it rarely gets mentioned when people compare headline weekly prices.

“If your loan is your main income, look for properties with 44/45 weeks in the contract. If you’re not planning on spending your time there in the summer, this will save you a LOT of money in the long run.”

The setting is a large part of the school’s character. The school’s early years were spent in Reading itself, first at a former inn known as The Talbot near Silver Street, then at Brunswick House on Bath Road from 1852.

The move to Sonning after the Second World War gave the school the room to expand that has shaped everything since. Pupils arrive each morning at Holme Park, the country house estate that has been the school’s home since 1947, with space for the kind of outdoor learning that wasn’t achievable within the previous town-centre site.

The most significant change in its modern history is happening now. Having welcomed girls into the Sixth Form for decades, Reading Blue Coat admitted girls into Year 7 for the first time in 2023 and is on course to become fully co-educational next year in September 2027.

Academic standards remain the anchor. In the summer 2025 examinations, 84 per cent of A Level grades were awarded at A* to B, while at GCSE 61 per cent of grades were 9 or 8 and 94 per cent fell within the 9 to 6 range.

Behind those numbers is a scholarship programme designed to recognise pupils who show real promise in a particular field. Academic scholarships are offered at Year 7 and Year 12, with specialist awards available in Art, Dance, Drama, Music and Sport at various entry points through the school.

The awards are honorary and do not carry any funding or fee remission but scholars are given a distinct programme of mentoring, trips and enrichment intended to stretch them. The deadline for admission and scholarship applications for September 2027 entry is Friday, October 30, 2026. Although scholarships are honorary rather than financial, Richard Aldworth’s commitment to educational opportunity remains. Each year, two Foundation Awards are offered to enable exceptional young people to thrive at Reading Blue Coat.

Life outside the classroom is valued as highly as life inside it. The co-curricular programme runs a busy performing arts calendar, including full-scale school productions, to a strong sporting fixture list and an adventure education strand that takes full advantage of the river, expansive site and outdoor facilities, including a high and low ropes course and shooting range. A Combined Cadet Force, a range of clubs and societies and the school’s Aldworth Partnership community and service programme sit alongside.

For prospective families there are several ways to see the school in person. A Whole School Open Morning is scheduled for Saturday, October 3, 2026 and a Sixth Form Open Evening for Tuesday, October 13, 2026, with smaller daytime tours led by the admissions team running through the year and including tea with the headmaster, Pete Thomas.

As Reading Blue Coat approaches its 380th year, what stands out is not its age but its ambition. It is the combination of deep-rooted history and continual evolution that gives the school its distinctive character.

Further information on admissions, scholarships and open events is available on the school’s web page.

“It’s a rock star tour,” she declares with a twinkle in her eye. “But I’m not a rock star, I’m a little old lady. I’m only 4ft 10. There aren’t many people on the stage shorter than me.”

The Oxford-born actress uses sticks to help her on stage and has a wheelchair to hand, just in case, and worries that she’s not going to be good enough, she says.

Meeting her today over Zoom, she is as sweary as she is on TV, dryly asking the PR to tell her lodger who is loitering visibly in the garden to ‘f*** off’, before calmly turning back to me to relate amiably, in her cut-glass accent, some of the more pertinent parts of her latest book, Miriam’s Full English, which she suspects will be her last.

The actor and bestselling author – she has written three previous memoirs – who achieved international prominence with her portrayal of Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter film series, has been described as a ‘national treasure’ but thinks ‘national trinket’ is more accurate.

“It’s flattering to be thought of as any sort of a treasure, national or international, but I’m happy with anybody who listens to me and likes me and doesn’t try to rubbish me.”

While Margolyes has been an actor on stage and screen for a considerable time, she agrees that she’s become more famous in recent years.

“I didn’t know it was going to take so long. I always thought I’d be famous but I didn’t know I’d have to wait till I was in my 80s. And I think I deserve it because I’m a nice person. I’m kind and I think kindness is probably the most important thing of all.

“I do feel very grateful for the fact that I haven’t been sidelined, as many older women are, but I’ve never been beautiful. I’ve never been gorgeous. I’ve never been sexy.

“I’m just very lucky that television started to do things called chat shows and I got invited on to them and I started to show off, which is what I do, and it’s made me famous.”

Chat show host Graham Norton has described her as ‘TV gold’ and she’s delighted that he will be interviewing her at the Royal Albert Hall during the book tour.

“It makes me nervous now when I go on his programmes because I don’t want to disappoint.”

In her new book, she turns her unflinching gaze on the British and what makes us tick.

The book covers everything from queuing to farting, accents, eccentricities, the weather, sex and smut. It is, as you’d imagine, full of quick wit, disarmingly candid observations and plenty of swearing.

“I am habitually foul-mouthed,” she agrees, admitting that she swears as much off-screen as on it.

“I’ve got a very posh voice and that’s because I was born in Oxford and I live a middle-class life. But it cuts you off from people if you sound middle class from the people who aren’t middle class and that, I think, is one of the reasons why I swear, because I think that makes people understand I’m just like them.

“I use swearing as a conduit to that world that otherwise I might not reach.”

While much of the book pokes fun at the peccadillos of British society, there is a serious message that the country has lost its way.

“It seems to me that we are surrounded by slippery politicians and liars and they are affecting our lives in a way that I don’t remember happening before.

“I think that politics, particularly, has overwhelmed people, and the evil of three men particularly, Trump, Netanyahu and Putin, have undermined people’s belief in the future, in the decency of the current world we live in, and the fear of the future.

“I don’t have children. I never wanted children. I’m not sorry I don’t have children but people who have children write to me and say, ‘I don’t know what to do about my grandchildren, about my children. How can I help them? How can I protect them?’”

In the book she also disparages politician Nigel Farage (who she nicknames Niggle Garage), and former prime minister Boris Johnson. Left wing she may be, but Margolyes also fires some criticism at past Labour politicians.

Known for being disarmingly honest in her anecdotes and opinions, she insists she never sets out to shock.

“I’m an intelligent Oxford-born, Cambridge-educated woman. I don’t set out to shock. I’m quite amused if I do and I think if I’m interviewing people it’s quite useful because if people are shocked, they will respond immediately and that’s what I want.”

These days she turns down a lot, including Celebrity Traitors which her friend Stephen Fry tried to persuade her to do, she reveals.

“I thought about it because I really like Stephen, I think he’s a force for good. But in the end, I thought, I just can’t quite bring myself to do it.

“I won’t do anything like that. I don’t like programmes where you have to choose people to be in or out. I don’t like competitions.

“I’ve been offered huge sums of money to do the jungle and that Strictly thing.”

Margolyes doesn’t need reality shows – in recent years she’s made travelogues, is about to film a documentary series in Australia, while her new road trip movie, Holy Days, about three nuns, made in New Zealand, has been released just before her book is published.

More than 60 years after her career began, she is still performing. She predicts that spinal stenosis will confine her permanently to a wheelchair soon. Does she feel old?

“I do sometimes, but not all the time. Sometimes I feel quite larky and that’s why I like performing. When I’m actually on stage and looking at an audience, I feel joy.”

Her book tours invite a Q&A from the audience. What’s the most common question she’s asked?

“It’s usually who is the nastiest person that I’ve had to deal with, or who is the best f***, or who’s the best kisser, or something intimate like that.

“I don’t like questions about my partner because I love her very much. She’s nothing to do with showbusiness and she told me that it’s infuriating when she looks at Google and just finds stuff about me, which should be about her. She looks under her own name and it’s all about me.”

In the book, she offers a manifesto for a happier and saner future, putting forward positive ideas such as ‘Adopt a granny’, ‘Talk to strangers’, ‘Take your earphones out’ and ‘Be brave’.

Her worries of the world fade, at least temporarily, when she’s on stage.

“When I step on stage now, usually I have sticks in my hands but there’s a roar, a real roar, and I don’t think many performers get that who are not world famous or really rock stars. But there’s such an affection in that roar and they are all smiling and clapping. Aren’t I lucky?”

Miriam’s Full English: A Grand Tour Of All Our Best Bits by Miriam Margolyes is published by John Murray on September 3, priced £25.

Miriam’s Full English tour visits various cities across the UK and Ireland from September to December 2026.