JAMIE Megson has carved out a promising career for himself and is hoping to show other young people the way.

After growing up on council estates in Sheepridge and Bradley, Jamie, 25, has just become the first person in Britain to graduate from The Financial Adviser School.

He’s now set up as a self-employed financial adviser and looks set for a successful career with earnings of at least £55,000 a year.

Jamie attended Bradley Junior School, Scissett Middle School and Shelley College before leaving to take a media studies degree at Sunderland University, where he dropped out after a year.

He said: “There were so many people doing the same course and it didn’t feel like it was going to lead to a job. I didn’t want to come out with all that debt and nothing at the end of it.”

He returned to Huddersfield and was working in a series of dead-end jobs when he had a lucky break. A friend told him of a job vacancy at Sesame Bankhall, in Halifax Road, Edgerton. It is the biggest provider of financial support services in the UK, working with 12,000 financial advisers.

Despite having absolutely no experience, they took him on and enrolled him, along with several other young people from around the country, in their brand new Financial Adviser School in July 2011.

Students, who do not have to work for Sesame Bankhall, are provided with laptops, software and support services and take classes with a trainer via the internet twice a week. They do all the studying and reading, about six hours a week, in their own time.

Jamie has just passed the Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning and is now qualified to give advice on insurance and assurance, mortgages, savings, investments and tax issues.

The fees for the course are £16,000, with £1,000 up front. But everyone who completes the course is guaranteed a self-employed place at Journey, a Sesame subsidiary, where they pay back the fees as they earn.

A spokesman said that graduates of the scheme would probably be debt-free within two years.

Jamie believes that the time is ripe for other young people from Huddersfield to follow in his footsteps.

Jamie said: “Local people from a background like mine might think that it’s tough out there, which it is. But this is a great opportunity. It’s a really good scheme, I have come from nowhere in 18 months and the future is really exciting”.