Game on for Marc
By Charlie Holding
Posted On » October 30 – November 5, 2013 (Volume:12 / Issue 44)

ONE of Bahrain’s top expat students was denied a student loan to study in his home country because bungling bureaucrats claimed his parents had lived abroad for too long … until GulfWeekly stepped in to help sort out the injustice, writes Charlie Holding.

Marc Steene, a teenage entrepreneurial, award- winning former St Christopher’s School pupil took a year out to raise funds for his further studies by launching his own successful hi-tech gaming company.

When he applied for a British student loan he was told he was ineligible and his parents were forced to secure a bank loan and appeal for financial support from family members to pay for his university studies.

Dad, Brian, 51, an IT teacher, who lives in Saar, said: “It was a nightmare and we seemed to be banging our heads against a brick wall.”

Mr Steene, the son of a British serviceman and born in Germany, met his wife Maria in Banbury, a small town in the English county of Oxfordshire, where he was teaching. They also have an elder son, Daniel, 23, a graduate of the London School of Economics, who now works as a consultant for Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) management consultants in Bahrain.

Marc, 19, who secured top grades at A level including an A* in biology and straight As in maths, physics and ICT, and received a certificate for outstanding academic achievement, said: “When I first applied for a student loan and it was turned down I was dumbfounded and we appealed thinking there must have been a mistake.

“During the appeal process we gave evidence of my dad’s employment contract, bank statements, statements of our storage unit in the UK containing our household belongings for when we return, but it was to no avail.

“Some of my friends who were not born in the UK, and who have never lived in the UK, were given the loan, because their parents own a house there. It felt like they were discriminating against people who could not afford their own house, which is the case of my parents, and one of the reasons why we moved to Bahrain in the first place.

“I only found out near the end of August, just shortly before I was due to start university, meaning we were left with a very short amount of time to find a large sum of money – the total cost of going to university for three years worked out somewhere around £55,000 (BD30,330).”

Securing funding for further education back in the UK can be a sore point for many British expats when they move abroad and take their families with them. Despite paying tax in the UK for decades, Mr Steene was stunned by his family’s initial treatment by the British government.

Mr Steene said: “I had to take out a personal loan, use my savings and beg from family members to get his first term fees paid. I have worked in the UK and had been paying tax since 1983. I left in 2008, so 25 years of tax paying should count for something.

“It was not so much that we felt entitled to support it was more a fact that the system of deciding who received a student loan appeared unfair.”

Despite the major setback, Marc set about raising funds to make his university dreams come true. He decided to use a gap year to design online computer games and use any proceeds towards his education studying Computer Science at the University of Bristol.

He had been toying with the subject since the age of 11 and there was no stopping him when he became ‘fully focussed’ on making it a success on the video-sharing website, YouTube.

He said: “My first project, called Sanatorium, was a small one-level horror game based on the internet sensation game ‘Slender’. It was a runaway success, and was played and reviewed by some of the biggest YouTubers, with a subscriber count in the millions.

“I then went on to design more maps for the game, and ended up with a total of nine maps which currently have almost five million downloads between them, with over 100,000 YouTube videos of the games.

“I then collated these maps together and redesigned them to be much more polished, which turned into my first commercial game called ‘Slenderman’s Shadow’, for $6.99 on the PC, Mac and Linux platforms. The game sold very well, which encouraged me to develop my game skills and invest more money into a new game project.

“This project ended up being ‘The Curse of Blackwater’, a story-based horror game, which was a huge improvement in terms of technical and graphical design over its predecessor. This game came out July 1 for $6.99 on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms.”

Despite the success of his business venture, the cost of a UK education still seemed out of reach … until GulfWeekly became involved.

GulfWeekly contacted the British Embassy in Manama, who referred the campaigning community newspaper to the press department of the Foreign Commonwealth Office which declined to comment about the Steene family case suggesting we checked its website for advice.

According to the website, if Brits are thinking of moving abroad, it’s important to research your destination, consider your personal circumstances carefully and plan for the long-term. Boring, but it directed us to another website https://www.gov.uk/student-finance/who-qualifies.

This proved more promising. It stated that the criteria for applying for a student loan depends on whether the applicants are UK nationals or have settled status with no restrictions on how long they can stay in the foreign country of residence, normally live in England, or have been living in the UK for three years before starting a course.

The settled status situation proved pivotal to a renewed appeal by the Steene family because temporary contacts, by their very nature, even rolling ones, have restrictions.

Following this newspaper’s intervention it also became apparent that vital paperwork evidence to support the Steene application had gone amiss in the UK.

On reflection, the Student Loans Company reversed its decision and granted Marc the loan and he is now enjoying his university life without financial anxiety and with the knowledge that he can pay it back when he earns enough money.

He said: “When I got the loan we were ecstatic, my mum even shed a few tears. I believe they changed their minds due to the final evidence package my dad sent off and GulfWeekly’s help.

“I am going to be using the loan to pay for the tuition fees and accommodation costs, and return all the money that I needed to borrow from members of my family.

“I’m loving university, it’s been such a great place for me to develop and meet new people and try so many new things!”

Knowing that many other British expat families in Bahrain may face a similar situation, Marc has offered these words of wisdom: “My advice to parents who wish their child to go to university in the UK is to plan ahead and try and own/rent a house at least three years before they are due to start at university as it will make the loan process so much easier,” he said.