North East Scotland College — Local services in Aberdeen City

Went to NE College for photography in 2012, and it was okay. I picked up the impression tutors were uninterested with my Samsung DSLR, when they only knew how to deal with Canon/Nikon. I learned a few tricks, but it was a lukewarm experience.

However, in May 2020, after moving to Aberdeen, my fiance applied for an IT support course after doing a similar (but not the exact same) year 1 in Dundee. They 'lost' his application. He chased them up via live chat in June. They sent over a conditional offer, on the condition he passed his first year in Dundee. He sent over a pass result to NESCOL. No acknowledgement.

Nothing until August, two weeks before term starts, when he received an email saying "We didn't receive your results, please send them in" Obviously he's worried, sends the appropriate email immediately. They needed the specific classes. He hunts through the SQA website and finds them.

Curriculum Manager comes back the same day, 5pm "We need your class codes to match up what you did in Dundee with NESCOL. We can do this tomorrow." Fiance panics, contacts a lecturer from Dundee, who gets the specific codes to him by 10.30am the next day. Fiance sends them on. No acknowledgement all day. Chases the Curriculum Manager up at 4.30. "I will call you at 9am tomorrow."

Next day, Curriculum Manager emails at 8.58 to say he had a meeting. We told him to phone our landline due to poor signal yet he tried a mobile number and said he couldn't get through. He eventually phoned at 10.45.

The result was my fiance would have to pay money to take on units from Year 1, and if they didn't line up with the HND requirements he still might not get the qualification. So after a curt word about lack of communication, the issue was resolved. Fiance is now attending Dundee and Angus College, thankfully virtually.

It just felt like he was just another problem to the staff, passed from person to person. The live chat people were friendly enough, but how do they actually lose an application? Were they just hoping he'd forget? What happened to the person he sent the results to in the first place? Have they never had somebody from a different college attending before? Why did my fiance have to source specific codes for someone who works in education? Why did it take 3 months for this conclusion? Just, absolutely abysmal communication from...

Being at this college was an absolute delight and an amazing experience! All of my lecturers were very nice and were always there to help and gave me the support I needed. I studied restart and I have learned so much during and throughout my time at Gallowgate. The lecturers that I had really know their stuff! No matter what I was stuck on they knew exactly what to do. So I would like to say thank you to all of the lecturers for being there and supporting me from the start to the end and I am very happy to have studied at Gallowgate, it is just a shame that I will be leaving to go to a different college, I would give up that other course just to stay at Gallowgate. So again thank you for everything and a big thank you to all of my lecturers

Kind...

Very beautiful place to study.The College has best full-time English course for speakers of other languages (ESOL), offered at Elementary, Pre-intermediate, Intermediate levels. The building is modern, well equipped and maintained. The teachers are amazing and frendly all the time. I love Dino's caffe were you can relax and enjoy a drink or something to eat.QuickByte provides excellent home cooked food, at affordable prices. Situated in E109 it is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday 12 noon till 1 pm. The beauty& hair students do an amazing job. I...