Oxford Open Learning - Oxford

Heidi D.

Adam Davis below is right - unless you had extra help I think you would be stuck. I passed but I already had a fairly comprehensive understanding of conversational French and simply wanted to improve my grammar. I agree with the other reviewers too - my tutor was rather uncommunicative, using one-line answers in emails, and I sensed an air of apathy over the phone at times when we did occasionally speak. What's more, I feel she may not have had that much of a higher standard of French than I already did - I would have liked to have had access to a tutor with native level French to really help immerse me in the language. I essentially taught myself on this course. The resources were good but not great - they certainly did contain spelling mistakes and typos. The only thing that helped was having a timeframe and schedule to stick to and tailored content relevant to the exam questions.

Adam D.

There is no way a student can pass A level French using just OOL without hiring an independent tutor. Wrongly they will receive the credit for my exam pass but I achieved this by having weekly lessons with my private tutor.
The OOL tutor asigned to me was jobs-worth, any additional request for assistance was greeted with a comment that it was more than she she was paid to do!

Alana

Appallingly communication on their part - failed to update on exam procedures. Understandable to a certain degree due to uncertainty of pandemic. However, totally unreasonably to not keep learners informed and then make it the fault and problem of the learner. They upheld my complaint, but now unscrupulous ignore my contact to take up remedy. Tutor's are good, but learning resources are archaic and examination procedures are unnecessarily convoluted at the best of times, let alone during a pandemic.

Geeta A.

Oxford Open Learning do not even deserve 1 star. They charge too much for too little. They are definitely not worth your money or your time. The service they have provided is absolutely appalling. Also, the materials they provide are poor and so out of date and make learning difficult. Their course materials are like they are from the dark ages and not worth the course fees. Communication is non existent, especially now that I want to make a formal complaint. In fact, I have been trying to escalate my matters since the 20th August and so far no one has been able to adequately respond and deal with my complaints, nor even acknowledge them. All I am getting is ignorance! I have to find out who regulates them and make an external complaint as well as reporting them to Ofqual. They sabotaged my every effort to get a fair calculated grade. I followed all of their last minute changes of rules and processes during lock down, all of which caused me immense stress and pressure. Despite following all guidelines they imposed on me, all at the last minute with minimal notice, and charging me an unfair set of second exam fees to obtain a calculated grade, they failed me in every way possible! What is worse is that they lacked transparency in every way. They registered themselves as an exam centre at the last minute. I suspect this was their attempt to cash in on students paying double the exams fees, as we had already paid another exam centre. My tutor was not involved in the process of being assigned a calculated grade. How they worked these out in the office is a total joke, especially when you consider all of their last minute changes. They clearly had no clues whatsoever. Their failures to award me a fair grade meant I lost my planned job opportunities and the financial security that would have come with that. According to their own guarantees they are meant to refund my course fees as they did not award me the equivalent of the A-C. But they are failing to act on this, their own policies. They are failing to reply to my emails. They are failing to respond to my complaints. Absolutely disgraceful! They failed me, failed to reply to my complaints, failed to refund me my course fees in line with their own guarantees, and failed to act as an appropriate exam centre, which they set themselves up for this summer to be able to award calculated grades. They failed to be transparent about their processes and predicted grades and failed to award a fair grade. Their motive for this is to get even more money out of me to retake exams and extend my course, without giving any care or concern for the impact of this on my life. They are completely inadequate to continue running as an educator and they are certainly not fit to be an exam centre. Their failures and total incompetence could ruin your life too! Save your money and go elsewhere and get a better service and better learning experience and achieve the grade your deserve. The Oxford Open Learning are a total shambles and a disgrace. They should be shut down!

Lucy M.

I wish i could give no stars for this. Recieved such an awful service from them - extremely unhelpful and unsupportive. I was asking and asking for help about my studies and none of the replies I received were helpful or specific, it was like they were avoiding my concerns and worries. Paying all that money, you'd expect a decent service with good tutors like they promised on my enrolment but i did not get any of this. I did not hear from one of my tutors at all, not even a welcome email/phone call which was also promised. I emailed my student advisor who told me to take it higher but when I did this, I did not get a response back until I wrote to them again TWO MONTHS LATER threatening to take my concerns higher than them. After some convincing, they offered me my money back from when I first raised my concerns out of 'good will' (really, we deserved all our money back due to not getting any help from the start) and even had the cheek to ask me to consider starting the courses again!! No way on earth was I going to consider that after the treatment i had been given. They drained me of money for rubbish service and disrespect, avoid avoid avoid!!!

Charlotte W.

The quality of the service provided is reflected in the price. Clearly if you pay only around £500 for an A-level course you can't expect much input from teaching. Furthermore, the materials are astonishingly poor quality. I showed my French folder to native French speakers and they said that it was full of errors. The teachers also had poor knowledge of the specification and materials provided bore little relation to the exam boards' scheme of assessment. I do not even particularly think that they were qualified to teach A-levels. I have wasted the most part of a year studying with OOL. Of course, there are few options for studying A-levels as an adult, though this company isn't worth your time.

Lakshan K.

Lakshan kumara

Jared B.