Following school, go to university, paying attention starting off (10)
I believe the answer is:
succeeding
'following' is the definition.
('succeed' can be a synonym of 'follow')
'school go to university paying attention starting off' is the wordplay.
'school' becomes 'S'.
'go to' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'university' becomes 'ucc' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'paying attention' becomes 'heeding' (as in heeding advice).
'starting off' means to remove the first letter (the starting letter is removed).
'heeding' with its first letter taken off is 'eeding'.
's'+'ucc'+'eeding'='SUCCEEDING'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for succeeding that I've seen before include "Doing well" , "following" , "not coming in first" , "Winning" .)