Reading College - Reading

Active S.

Up there with the most inconsistent colleges in the UK. These guys don't give you your exam results or enrolment details. You email them and it takes two weeks for them to get back to you missing important days in college. They tell you one thing after another about what to do but its completely lies. Don't go here.

Axy

Worst college of all time. The 2nd time people in my course are always rude. This guy in my course stinks have some hygiene please. I didn’t get into 1st year college because they said everything is full which is put me a year back I’m deciding to drop out because I’m not happy with college this year as most people my age left. Would not recommend this college to anyone. With 1st year I actually got into a course after a month they said they had space and then 2 days they said accidentally enrolled me in and took away my landyard a whole year I missed.

A R.

not a great college tbf. Should’ve noticed that when I seen the reviews and the stars. told I was getting into 2nd year of my course but was wrong as I had too make multiple emails and phone calls after they replied to make 2 weeks late saying that there were clearing sessions available but when I went there, I was told they had been finished and that the college shouldn’t have sent me that emails. Emailed them multiple times and was ignored.

Fatima V.

Was guaranteed a place to my daughter, i bought materials on £300 value for the course as directed, plus paid £185 for her bus pass school term and waited to receive timetable by email. So she did. On Friday evening she received a email stating the class was full and she wasn't accepted, when supposedly would start following Monday. Reading college clearly doesn't care about the students or future. Shame on them.

mjvdz98

My first time at Reading College was between 2017 and 2019 doing a Btec Science course. As I was really impressed with the college back the, I though I'd return for the 23/24 academic year for a Btec Engineering course following a bad experience I had with another course I did at university. Although the first few weeks of the course went smoothly, things started to go downhill quite quickly from November. Here's a summary of some issues I had:

- As a mature student, I paid a good amount of money for the 1 year I was back at Reading College. However, because I missed so many lessons that had amounted to missing several weeks, I arranged a meeting with my faculty manager about getting a partial refund for them. As he had to email the directors, I had to wait quite a few weeks to hear back, but to both of our disappointments, they DIDN'T refund me, and even my faculty manager said that if it was up to him, he would've given me all of the money I requested. As many other people have said, Activate Learning are clearly more worried about making a profit than giving their students the best experience possible.

- My next point is about one of my recent lessons, where I had an important meeting about my apprenticeship one morning, which I heard about back in March and would’ve been impossible to change. My timetable had been changed a few days before to an important lesson, so I emailed my lecturer regarding this, and he said that it would be fine for me to miss it, with me under the presumption that I’d be able to catch up. When I emailed him the following day about this, not only did he say that I wouldn’t be able to catch up as it was a teamwork based assignment, but he was also implying that I was at fault for prioritising my apprenticeship meeting that I had in the diary for over 3 months over this important lesson that was rescheduled only a few days prior. On top of this, he copied my tutor, faculty manager and other workshop lecturer into the email in an attempt to find an alternative solution to this problem. Again, this really annoyed me, as this rescheduling was out of my hands, and I felt I was tricked into thinking I'd be able to catch up.

- In my last 2 weeks at college, my timetable for my Btec class, including the week commencing the date I write this review, our timetable was rammed with early starts and late finishes (8-6 instead of 9-5) to catch up with missing lessons. This is an attempt to catch up with 6 assignments that we should've been doing for the few months prior, but those lessons were cancelled due to the T-Level coursework taking priority over ours. Overall, I feel like we were treated like 2nd-class students who had a mad rush to finish assignments through no fault of our own, whilst the T-Level students are now finished and now on summer holiday.

- On top of this, the T-Level students got a LOT more support than the Btec students. One important part of both courses is gaining work experience, of which it's compulsory for the T-Level students and optional for the Btec students. Whilst the T-Level students got help finding it, the Btec students just got a list of company websites to look at and were told to find it ourselves with minimum guidance and help. I know this is part of both of the courses specifications, but I feel like the T-Level lot get preferential treatment just because they're a more academic route.

Overall, I feel that my year at Reading College was an absolute disaster for students who were on the Btec route, and it's the reason I quit. I'm only giving a 2-star review as my first time at Reading College was good, but even that's being generous for what I've had this year.

Since quitting, I come in every Wednesday for my apprenticeship release day, but the issues of not letting us know about last minute timetable changes are still continuing. This college honestly can't be trusted when it comes looking after the students, and I wish I was at another college that's better than this mess. Please do yourself a massive favour and avoid this college like the plague!

Alex

It is the 4th time of trying to claim my college id/lanyard in the span of 2 weeks they keep telling me to come back in a few days and when I come in to collect it I am told once again to wait a few days. I should have received it normally like everyone else as I was enrolled to my course. However they keep telling me that it is because of their system. They should fix it or update it as I do not have any access to the college and have spent countless hours in the line waiting to collect it. This years design on the lanyard is not to many people’s liking as so see most of them coming into college with their previous lanyard that does not have any lgbt designs on it.

Aamir N.

very good building for its build in 2016 and the courses are very interesting even though its my first year as a student

Lesley L.

My daughter attended Reading College to complete an art course following her passion for this. At the start everything was great she enjoyed going into college doing her work. However as the months past she then became a victim of bullying and harassment. Despite going into the college on a weekly basis no one took this matter seriously. In the end I had no option but to notify the police.
Further more this then calmed down but once again it flared up and restarted resulting in affecting my daughters mental health to the point she became scared to even go out.
The college stated that they were dealing with the situation and having chats with the pupils involved but this was not solving the problem. Despite my many attempts of contact with the college via emails phone calls even going into see someone was difficult the lack of response I had just showed they was not interested.Now my daughter has taken the decision not to go back for her second year because of this. I find it disgusting that the college done absolutely nothing to make sure my daughter was safeguarded I would not recommend this college to anyone thinking of attending. An absolute disgrace.