It’s not often I get to say: "yesterday I opened at the O2 Arena, for the Transformation Trust Rock Assembly". The challenge was to talk student finance to kids desperate to see Tinchy Stryder, Diversity, Chipmunk, Hadouken! and the rest. But even with the boos, I think I may have pulled it off…

Having expected 13-18 year olds, as I got to the Arena it turned out they were actually 11-16 year olds with many at the younger end of the age group – adding to the pressure, as university funding issues are a long way off for them.

But, at that point I thought what the hell, it’s better to run the very real risk of me dying on my arse, for the chance of getting crucial messages across. And actually, that nihilistic state of mind made it all a lot easier. Especially when virtually everyone I met from the Rock Assembly crew kept telling me how ‘brave’ what I was doing was.

The X Factor trick up my sleeve

Having known this would be tricky (thanks for all your top suggestions), we’d arranged a surprise bit of help. The X-Factor voice over artist, Peter Dickson, came along to do my intro (in X Factor style, playing the ‘celeb hype’ card to try and boost the attention rates) and then bring in each key point for me to explain.

Nothing quite prepares you for hitting the stage with that many people. The excitement was as thick as treacle and the noise like a wall.

I think they were just desperate for the show to get on the road – so I played an easy card first and asked whether they were looking forward to Tinchy SHRIEK, Diversity SHRIEK and Chipmunk SHRIEK - the decibels were louder than Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen’s dress sense.

Then I tried to take that momentum and shift it to: "Now shout out even louder if you want to go to University" – thankfully the shrieks continued.

We can’t let kids be scared of bettering themselves

Many schools invited to attend this charity concert have a large percentage of pupils on free school meals, as they’re from lower income families. So I went straight in, while I knew they were listening, with the meat of the message and said something like:

I’m here to tell you one thing. Whatever you have heard, there is no-one in this room, who if they get the grades and work hard, should be scared they can’t go to university because they don’t have the money. If you want to go, you can."

Hearing them cheer for this really made my day!

The boos were good news too

Then I called in Mr. X Factor to read out in his unique style the key points (each displayed behind me in 12 foot text) with me explaining each after. What was fascinating was how they keyed into each response.

• "YOU DON’T NEED CASH TO GO TO UNIVERSITY" - CHEER
  
  As I explained that the fees will be paid for them by the government, there was a huge CHEER.

  But, when I went on to the fact that once you graduate, if you earn, and remember most people who go to University earn on average £100,000 more than others, CHEER, you will need to repay it, and there was an almighty BOO!

  Frankly, it threw me for a second. Yet my role as head of the Independent Taskforce on Student Finance isn’t to sell the system, it’s to explain it – so I suddenly thought hell, as long as they get the message, even if they don’t like it, I’m doing it right.

  It soon played out that it was all part of the grammar of this type of event. It’s about a vocal, good natured response that demonstrates they are engaged with what is being said (interestingly when I said the phrase ‘the Government’ there was a large boo too).

And that’s the way it went, from then on they played ‘judges’ to each of the key messages on the screen…

• "EARN UNDER £21,000 AND NEVER REPAY" – CHEER!
• "REPAYMENTS STOP AFTER 30 YEARS" – CHEER!
• "YOU PAY BACK LESS, BUT FOR LONGER AND MORE" – BOO!

  The boo was especially loud when I explained that many of their generation would repay much more than current students.

• "DONT BELIEVE THE HYPE!"

  At this point I changed the tone and took the volume down to get some silence. I explained that while they will hear lots of diverse views on the news arguing the goods and the bads of the system – that’s about the bigger picture – of the future of the whole structure.

  What they need to focus on, is that if they want to go to university and if they’re bright enough – they don’t need to have the cash and they will only repay if they earn enough once they leave.

That was it, my five minutes were up and I was off (originally I’d also planned to include "£6,000 OR £9,000 – IT’S THE SAME EACH MONTH" and "YOU GET LIVING LOANS OF UP TO £7,675", but when I realised the age group I cut these as it was too much info).

Overall I hope the message got across

It’s very difficult to judge how it went with so much noise and all those faces staring back at you. It got the adrenalin pumping through the system (I can hardly remember a word that I actually said). As I came off the guys from Hadouken! who were about to go on, were really kind saying how well it went.

I think I managed to hold their attention through it and get the message across. It’s especially important for social mobility that children from lower income backgrounds aren’t disenfranchised by thinking "I’ll never be able to go to uni", which can easily spiral into defeating all aspirations too early.

They need to understand that whatever their family finances, if they want to go to university it is attainable for them (lower income families actually get much more support see student loans 2012 for more info).

PS. It was filmed, so if I can get the footage, I’ll put it on here.