Hey @CAAus!
Typically when we think about the establishing our customer persona, we think of it as the person who will actually be using the product or asking for the product as opposed to the person who is actually paying for it. While you will want content for the person who is paying that will make them feel confident in the product they are purchasing, this typically is not 'Top of the funnel' content, more of a sales enablement tool to nudge someone along once they have already started to consider purchasing.
When you are thinking about attracting people to your brand, from your description it seems like the people you want to be attracting are the students. As such, the types of topic clusters and content you produce should be oriented to this student, who it sounds like is trying to leverage your tool to get ahead or keep from falling behind.
As far as marketing to the student, it can be harder because they tend to purchase at much lower rates (although if the motion here is for a parent purchase this may not be as much of a factor). It also can be harder, because they tend to consume content in very different ways than people in the working world would. They use different platforms (TikTok vs Instagram vs Facebook) and their actual content can look very different than what we might be used to. As such, when going after this audience it can be super helpful to conduct surveys (they can often be quite cheap online) or have a small sampling of people within the target demographic that are willing to be interviewed periodically.