National Extension College Avis 

Student support is excellent. I wish the option of studying traditionally was still there, rather than purely online, but I suppose that would be more expensive. Nonetheless, the course is very well structured.

Hi
think it was the 4th november, am a new student in my seventies and wasnt sure how to download my first assignment. I e mailed Student support and in the afternoon,much to my surprise Stephenie tel, and went through the whole procedure step by step with me. I was so pleased and appreciated her help and patience so much. I was also sent an e mail with instructions on how to do this, but also with the assurance if I got stuck again I could just ring student support. Thank you Stephenie for such a prompt reply to my query.
Moira

Very friendly and approachable and patient and help you go through the options and allowed me to make a informed decision.

Good service on the whole, staff (Stephanie) helped to eventually resolve, but struggled severely when logging on initially. Someone had added a full stop on the end of my log in details, this wasnt there on the actual log in, resulting in lots of too ing & fro ing to get help as i couldnt access anything or reset anything. Also my ebook was not viewable & again had to pester for help to access it. Apart from this all ok

Honestly, I am thrilled with amount of information found on GCSE Maths Higher Course.
I would definitely recommend NEC courses to anyone who hasn't been able to achieve as much as grade they are willing to acquire and want to study while working. All the contents on this course fits the purpose. I am really enjoying the course at moment.

Have just started the course, I'm hoping to get good grade pass at the end of this course, I believe it must be with hard study. I wished, had started earlier. NEC staffs are very good, thanks for your support I have received so far.

This is my 2nd time I have had to call NEC, regarding Hodder ebook app. I have attempted 6 times to access the app. Every time it has failed. Told to uninstall and install. I was told someone from Hodder books will call back. Nothing so far and I suspect this will be an ongoing issue. This is now putting me further back on my studies. I'm on the brink of withdrawing from the course. I don't want to be playing catch up all the time. I'm certainly not prepared to pay my Direct Debits to a course I can only half do. NEC this is poor.

When I have had difficulties accessing my A level French ebook online, NEC support staff provided me with relevant details of alternative approaches until I figured out how to resolve the problem
Their detailed guidance remains in my database so I can try out parts of it when I face a comparable challenge

Incredibly easy to use, just an all round brilliant experience.

I have found working through the course to be very easy and helpful

I’m very happy I’ve signed up for the French A level. It’s brought back great memories of when I was 17 and was preparing for it the first time. I thought I had forgotten French, it’s a wonderful feeling knowing that it isn’t the case.
I’m especially enjoying the challenge of it. The website is simple to use and the themes we are studying are actually relevant and interesting. Lovely to read Camus this time as well. I actually found a recording of Camus reading l’étranger and it’s an absolute delight to hear the author reading it.

I spoke to a very nice lady who talked me through the sign up process & the monthly payments and as soon as I had paid the deposit I got access to the course the same day.
I highly recommend NEC!

Continual disparity between feedback from Tutors and marking. When asking questions for improvement, relevance missed. Now the second year my daughter has been given great predicted grades, told little areas for improvement and then awarded completely different marks. She now stands little chance of getting her chosen University for the second year running. Don't bother disputing, it takes months and nothing changes.
It's great you asking her to complain, we did test for English and it got her nowhere. Plus you want her to spend valuable revision time going through all of her previous notes and outline why she is appealing, AND pay £50 for the privilege. She literally has two days to get this to you.

No confidence in your company at all.

Early days for IGCSE Physics. Enrolment was straightforward, introduction to the website clear, prompt greetings from tutor, introductory assignment was a good way to familiarize myself with the process of submitting PDFs, materials downloaded for assignment 1 are excellent, assignment 1 challenging and enjoyable. Contented student.

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.