A placement year is (or used to be) very specific, and formed part of the course. It wasn't meant to be a money making exercise. I could get on my high horse about getting through Uni without a grant and without any parental help and still managing to come out in credit, but that's another discussion. 
If it is now meant to be a year of making money to pay off your debts, then yes of course minimum wage is too low especially if you have skills that your employers needs.
It's at the lower end of placement salaries, but it's still within the relevant range (10 falls between 9 and 20 the last time I checked). So it's low, but not urine-extractingly so. But without qualifications and experience it's tough starting out (having been through the mill myself) - and sometimes you just have to make the best of a bad situation.
The example salaries cited above are either large firms with well entrenched graduate programmes, where they will probably offer a job post-graduation or perhaps a sponsorship through the final year, or are based in London. If this is a small firm somewhere other than London, then the salary will be that much lower.
FWIW, my placement year (some time ago now) was £10k, and my first job was £14.5k - but I had a lot of relevant skills (especially back then, when Lotus 1-2-3 was the height of desktop application sophistication).
If it is now meant to be a year of making money to pay off your debts, then yes of course minimum wage is too low especially if you have skills that your employers needs.
It's at the lower end of placement salaries, but it's still within the relevant range (10 falls between 9 and 20 the last time I checked). So it's low, but not urine-extractingly so. But without qualifications and experience it's tough starting out (having been through the mill myself) - and sometimes you just have to make the best of a bad situation.
The example salaries cited above are either large firms with well entrenched graduate programmes, where they will probably offer a job post-graduation or perhaps a sponsorship through the final year, or are based in London. If this is a small firm somewhere other than London, then the salary will be that much lower.
FWIW, my placement year (some time ago now) was £10k, and my first job was £14.5k - but I had a lot of relevant skills (especially back then, when Lotus 1-2-3 was the height of desktop application sophistication).