National Extension College Reviews 242

Lots of support and great courses. Highly recommended!

Well organised Biology course, readable and enjoyable materials, and helpful tutors.

I have finished my A Level studies with NEC, and I am so glad I chose this college. The tutors were always friendly and their feedback was immensely useful. Whenever I had an enquiry, they were quick to respond and very helpful. At the end of my course, after my enrolment had finished, I had a little problem with the exam board, and even then they still helped me to sort things out with the exam board. I can’t recommend this college enough.

NEC are probably fine if there is no need for Teacher Assessed Grades (TAGs). Whilst I understand that NEC is a business whose model is to prepare students for exams, not to provide TAGs, NEC’s TAG policy is not fit for purpose. Like other reviewers have mentioned, NEC have let a lot of students down and caused students serious problems with their TAG policy and I have today submitted and formal complaint to NEC regarding this.

My daughter started studying A level Maths during the first lockdown in addition to her usual school work, expecting to take an exam in summer 2021. Obviously the exams were cancelled and NEC decided to weight 100% of the marks for her TAG to assessments that she completed before the announcement to cancel the exams, so she didn’t give them the care and attention that she would have done if she had known they were going to make up the whole of her final A level grade! When the exams were cancelled, she submitted two past papers (one of which we paid additional fees for) and achieved well over the A* boundary (based on historic data), but she still received an A from NEC, even though the guidance from the Dept for Education was that more recent evidence was more likely to be representative of a students ability. We appealed to both NEC and the exam board, but to no avail, her A grade remained unchanged.

This resulted in her sitting the autumn series exams, in which she has now received the A* she should have received in the summer. Her % score from the autumn exam was almost exactly the same as the two past papers that she submitted to NEC as evidence and 19% above the A* grade boundary. Given this, I fail to see that how the two past papers marked by NEC at around 90%, did not give her a A* when the A* boundary is around 70-75% historically.

As others have said, NEC have caused massive amounts of distress to my daughter and has meant that she is now behind with the other 3 A levels that she is studying in school as she had to focus all her attention in August, September and October on retaking A level maths to achieve the grade that she needed for her university choices, instead of focusing on revising for her other A levels as she should have been. This in turn mean that the A level mocks she has just sat in school are not reflective of her ability either, so if teacher assessed grades are used again in 2022, it will cause her more problems.

All of these problems would have been avoided if NEC’s decision makers had come up with a sensible way to derive TAGs.

On the plus side, her tutor has been very helpful and provided excellent feedback.

16/12/22 - edited to add that my daughter secured a place to study maths at Cambridge University.

I still can’t believe that NEC gave such a gifted student a grade A and caused her so much stress (and distress) with her university application and necessitated the extra workload involved with having to take the Autumn series exam to get her UCAS application back on track and get the A level grade she deserved in the summer of 2021.

My daughter was terrified for quite a while that the TAG would prevent her from getting into Cambridge, but luckily they saw beyond the A grade given by NEC. The worst thing is that it was all completely avoidable.. It’s a good job my daughter is resilient!

As an older student, I was really put off at the fact that the NEC A Level course seemed to not provide the same level of support to myself as it did other students.
I came out with a teacher assessed grade of a B. I was predicted an A.
I achieved an average grade across ALL of my assignments of over 75% which by my exam board's standard is equivalent to a strong A*.
Due to covid lots of last minute changes occured. I'm completely and utterly disgusted at being told all assignments needed to completed by April (that was fine and I understand why they did this) but then in May to give us 8 days notice for an exam that had never been mentioned prior. I work 40 hours a week and wrote to NEC that there was no possible way I could get the time off work. I never received a response. This was not at all acceptable for individuals like myself or those in different time zones. I can only assume this is what influenced my grade.

Furthermore, no consideration was taken in my circumstance, I lost two jobs due to COVID and was made homeless and still completed the course in under a year and tried to let my tutor know about the struggles I was having.
I felt there are some very old fashioned ideologies floating around and my struggles were completely disregarded.
After spending over £1000 between the course, exams (that I never sat), UCAS applications, past paper marking and references, I never even got the grade that I both deserved and needed in order to go to the university I wanted to.

If you're not working full time/at all or not in a different time zone then yes, you'll probably be okay.

I found there was little support and realistically, I learned everything from the textbook and other material, NOT what I spent £600+ on. When I asked for support I was just told to spend more money on different resources.

I don't regret taking the course at all, I enjoyed studying and it helped keep me sane during the first lockdown. However, there looks as if there's a need for a large reform from NEC and they need to look into the students the really let down.

I studied A-Level Chemistry with NEC, from April 2020 - May 2021.

Overall, the package offered by NEC was well structured and effective. The pricing is significant for my specific course when all that is truly received from the college, other than online textbooks, is 10 60-mark assessments marked with some feedback. My tutor I was assigned was well qualified on paper but not actually that much help to approach with subject questions. I mostly ended up resorting to reddit, google and old school friends when I was stuck. Still I the online portal and recommendation made by NEC for how much study to do helpful.

However, due to the specifics of the 2021 exam season, with traditional exams cancelled, my positive experience with NEC was trashed.

A-Level exams were cancelled in 2021 due to COVID-19, by the Department for Education. NEC decided, almost 2 months later (my memory is hazy on the exact time periods), to spring an assessment on students studying A-Level sciences, that would inform student's final A-Level grade. I am not sure whether this was done for other subjects too. They gave 2 weeks notice, after I and many others had finished the course and moved on. Some students had taken up new jobs, and NEC made no consideration for the independent personal lives of their students. NEC expected students to be able to drop everything and prepare for a significant assessment with no warning.

The problems with this announcement were numerous and spoke volumes about the consideration NEC gave to its students. All communication was vague, unhelpful and completely unapologetic for the mess NEC made of the issue.

It was only because of the vocal protest of many students in forums and via email communication that this proposal was dropped a few stressful days later.

Overall, I believe NEC is run and managed in good faith. However, that is not the same as being managed well and with careful consideration for its students.

Repeatedly use my child’s information to share on forums. Have been asking for over a year for them to stop.

I retook my GCSE English, Maths, Biology and Chemistry through the NEC. I found the NEC resources good, but also chose to purchase the CGP & exam board specific texts recommended in the NEC material. When I reached out to my tutors the support was great, my assignments were returned swiftly and with helpful comment. I found studying Maths the hardest, but there are plenty of YouTube tutorials to help if you get stuck. All the best with your studies.

Really good support and now I've got a grip on the system and formats, it's veryexciting.

Course materials are comprehensive and easy to follow, plenty of support when needed and always engaging.

My daughter recently completed A Level Classical Civilisation with NEC. The course is structured so that students can complete it at their own pace and she found all the resources clear. I was impressed by the quality of feedback she received from her tutor (I am a teacher). The feedback enabled her to make progress. She says that there was a lot more support available from her tutor that she didn't make use of - but she was glad it was there. I was also very happy with the administration of the course and exam. Responses to queries are reasonably quick and clear. They communicated regularly through the course. This is really sound distance learning and I am very happy with it. I am very confused by the negative reviews as our experience has been so positive.

Great online college to do A levels with. Very helpful.

Be warned, you need to be very self disciplined, know what to expect from your tutor, and give yourself as much time as possible to complete the course.

With A level Literature, I would put the non examination assessment as the first task. As soon as you read about the course, start your NEA by choosing your 2 texts to compare and start reading/ making notes. The more work you do on this, the better your final result will be.

I made the decision to study A levels (Maths, Further Maths and Physics) at NEC. My experience with NEC has been amazing and beyond my expectation.

The course materials provided were comprehensive and easy to follow. I found the practicing questions very helpful and were enough to prepare me for the exams.

My tutors were brilliant, they provided detailed feedbacks on every assignment and answered my questions promptly. The other NEC staffs were also very supportive and friendly.

NEC guided me through UCAS submission and exams booking. Now I've completed A level courses and will study at my dream university this September. NEC, thank you!

The materials for this Art History online course are excellent. Enrolment was simple and the online platform is pretty easy to use. Most importantly, though, the content of the course has been fascinating so far. I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Really good methods for basic numeracy, most of which I had not come across before. Still learning to navigate website, this could be more user friendly. Have not tried tutor yet so cannot comment on this.

Great experience!
The experience studying at NEC was amazing! The course was well structured, easy to access and my tutor, Amanda, was brilliant!! Her feedback was always very prompt and extremely useful. I definitely recommend studying with NEC.

Very early days yet, but the course materials are good and my tutor contact has been excellent.

Enjoying the A Level course but slightly disappointed to be sent a special offer the week after I started that NEC would not let me use.

Extremely easy process. The staff kept me informed of relative information and were prompt in their response to any questions I had. Overall a good experience

Perfect, responsive, always helpful and prompt to respond.