Reading College — Attraction in Reading

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...

This is following my previous review which is stated below this one. I am absolutely disgusted with the college following on from what had previously happened despite being contacted regarding my review and promised something would be done and support would be in place for my daughter this did not stick !! The support was ridiculous and my daughter still got blamed for everything that happened. Harassing behaviour still continued and bullying was and still is on going so now my daughter has applied to go to a different college. I had reached out many times and had no response. Even the tutors disrespected my daughter and treated her like she was nothing telling her she was useless and left her to her own devices. Emails being sent out with incorrect details so she missed out on things and then was covered up by her tutor resending emails but just changing the dates then blaming my daughter for not reading the email, little did she know my daughter has kept all these emails as proof. One tutor which is the main one who treated my daughter so badly gave myself the impression she cared when my daughter was admitted to hospital then when my daughter returned this tutor had ago at her for missing college ! This place is an absolute joke and the support is non existent. The places don’t even deserve one star. So if anyone decides or is thinking of going to Reading college please think carefully I wouldn’t want anyone going through the same thing my daughter has.

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...

AVOID THIS PLACE LIKE FIRE - THEY WILL ROB YOU!

I've had the worst experience at reading college - I've started AAT course back in September, but unfortunately our teacher wasn't actually a teacher, rather somebody whom went to AAT course themselves and wanted to become a teacher... maybe this wouldn't be a problem if not the fact that the teacher spoken very broken english and could not explain stuff very well.

Having raised the issue numerous times (with other class members) with a senior member of stuff and having seen nothing being done, I decided to drop out due to the stress the teacher was causing me; back in beginning of February I have raised the issue with the management of the college and made official complaint, to which I was told there will be an investigation which will hear the outcome of after 12 days...

Mr. P. Emberlin did not come back to me until after nearly 4 months of my initial complaint, despite my many attempts to try and contact him (in fact, even my employer had reach out to Mr. Emberlin).

Mr. Emberlin claimed he tried to call me but the number he said he was using, was my old number despite me giving him a new number for me when I initially made complaint.

The moment he responded to my emails was when I said I would make a complaint on gov.uk website.

Honestly, this was the worst experience with an education system in my life.

Wouldn't recommend this college to anyone (not for a professional...