Best advice to give to son?

happyandcontented

That was part of my point earlier. If you need a foundation year due to grades maybe that should be a real pause for thought as to whether going to university is actually the way forward. It is not the only way and certainly not the best way for everyone.

Spendless

redmel1621 wrote: »

Your comment about the foundation year vs the extra year at college is one we need to think about.
If he opted for the foundation year at university, would it effectively be classed as a 4 year course, meaning he would get student finance funding for the full 4 years? Do students on a foundation year get the option to move into halls for their foundation year, as well as year 1 of their course?

It is something to consider certainly.

My DS gets student funding for his foundation year and is in halls of residence. So yes, he will be there for 4 years, 5 if he does a placement year (his Uni makes no charge during a placement year)

For putting his Uni as first choice, he was guaranteed foundation year if he didn't meet the grade requirements, as well as guaranteed halls in his preferred ones.

Spendless

happyandcontented wrote: »

That was part of my point earlier. If you need a foundation year due to grades maybe that should be a real pause for thought as to whether going to university is actually the way forward. It is not the only way and certainly not the best way for everyone.

It depends on the reason. I never wanted my DS to attend the FE college he went to, I told him it was disorganised and not that good. He wouldn't listen. Going to University despite his grades, IS the best thing that has happened to him (so far). He has matured very quickly. It is a better option for him to do this than the alternatives he would have had on offer if he'd stayed at home.

happyandcontented

Spendless wrote: »

It depends on the reason. I never wanted my DS to attend the FE college he went to, I told him it was disorganised and not that good. He wouldn't listen. Going to University despite his grades, IS the best thing that has happened to him (so far). He has matured very quickly. It is a better option for him to do this than the alternatives he would have had on offer if he'd stayed at home.

Are you saying you blame the college for his grades?

Spendless

happyandcontented wrote: »

Are you saying you blame the college for his grades?

Yes in part. At both the end of yr1 and yr2, they told him they hadn't received some assignments. This was on the very last week of term in both years. They had, they'd lost them. Son ended up re-submitting them, but in yr1 he hadn't kept a back up. He stayed up through the night to get the work re-done. He learnt to keep a copy after that, which is why it wasn't as big a problem in yr 2. It still happened that when he re-sent the work to one tutor, another a few days later said he hadn't. When the rest of the country got their grades, DS never got his. I blamed him for the next 2.5 weeks convinced that he wasn't telling the truth about 'no-one in his class had got them' and just couldn't be bothered. Then I asked his more sensible friend and discovered that it was true. Friend said that the college had said 'they were working on it' when he'd queried why he hadn't received his results. 1 day short of 3 weeks after the rest of the country got their grades, they all received a text to come in and get their results/certificates. No explanation for the delay.

A badly disorganised college with poor teaching wasn't likely to produce much in the way of getting loads of their students with good results. I'd been told of the college's reputation before DS went there. I warned him not to go and why. He took no notice as it was the only local option at the time.

happyandcontented

Which subject was he studying?

Spendless

happyandcontented wrote: »

Which subject was he studying?

Computing

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happyandcontented

I thought that might be the subject from your comments. I used to lecture on that course, now I assess the quality of courses at that level. I will start by saying that the situation you describe exists in many colleges, but often, that is not down to the staff who actually teach.

Firstly, all colleges have a course induction day/s and for computing, the very first thing they are told is you must back up work, and if you don't you will have to redo it if it goes astray.

Work may be handed in and sometimes, unfortunately, it can be lost but it wouldn't need a 'back up' to be reprinted as it would be done from the original copy which would be saved during the process of working on the assignment and again at the end. Even if ( in the very unlikely) event that the student didn't manually save it the work would be in the temporary cache and could be retrieved from there.

Additionally, at level 3 in most colleges students are required to run work through 'Turn it in' which checks for plagiarism, again, that would be an online copy. Losing work permanently because of these safeguards is very unusual, but it can happen, which is why a back up is mandated at induction. Also, most colleges now use various cloud portals to store assignments and completed student work which again, reduces the risk of loss.

With regard to deadlines, these have penalties attached for not meeting them, the usual thing is that if you miss a deadline you are capped at a pass. If you hand in an assignment and you have not worked on the M or D criteria you have missed the boat on those grades as when it is handed back for the ten-day resubmission reworking period, again, only a pass can be achieved.

Course grades cannot be sent off for ratification until every student has submitted all their assignments and they have been marked/second marked and then sent off to Quality to be checked. Then they are subject to random sampling by an outside assessor. If at any stage of that process there is disagreement on the grades then it has to be discussed and a resolution reached. Then there are the externally examined units ( depending on which syllabus is being used)

Any hiccup in any of the above can cause the qualification to be delayed. If the external assessor finds issues they can 'block' the course qualification across the board meaning no one can be notified of their grades until whatever issue is under scrutiny is sorted out.

These can include; marking which is too harsh, marking which is too lenient, marking criteria as met which the assessor doesn't consider has been met, marking criteria as not met which the assessor considers has been met, missing criteria, incomplete criteria, etc, etc.

All of which means that grades are normally due on a date in August but often ( all across the country) that date is not able to be met for reasons beyond the control of the colleges.

On a Level 3 Btech course class groups can be up to 25 students and often there are several groups. In any given group there are those who are conscientious students and those who are not and those who fall somewhere in the middle.

Across the board many students will fail to meet deadlines, will 'lose' work, will not back up work, will do little or no work until the final days of the term, and then submit a pile of assignments together. All of which results in lecturers having to rush to mark assignments to meet their internal/external deadlines for the marking process.

In computing & IT, lecturers may be asked to teach from Level 1 to Degree level and may have several groups at each level.

If you consider all the vagaries of students meeting deadlines/losing work, the demands of college bureaucracy, the demands of external assessments/exams, the number of students and the number of modules per student ( circa 13 on level 3 Btech over an academic year) then you can see the amount of marking involved and the need to get it right.

None of the above detracts from the requirement for professionalism/organisation, both from the college or the staff, but I just wanted to give an overview of why blaming the college is sometimes the easy route but doesn't always give the whole picture.

Students do have a major role to play in achieving their qualification in a timeous fashion and sadly not all of them play the game either!!

Spendless

Thanks for your explanation happyandcontented. You've clarified more in your above post than we ever discovered in 2 years of DS being at college. This just tells me that there is even more need for the department teaching I.T to be 'on the ball'.

There's more I haven't mentioned here such as at open evening (wasn't parents evening as FE college so some students 18+) DH asking to understand how the grading system worked and being told they didn't know. DS had explained it at about 80% what you have, it was the other 20% what we didn't understand (until your post)

DH asking for what alternatives were available to DS when he looked to fail yr1 (eg was re-sitting the year an option?) and being told there wasn't anything. There'd been an issue with DS pc (can't remember what) which had caused a problem with back ups. As said he learnt in yr2 to have a belts and buckle approach, so had them all at hand when told he hadn't submitted them. There was the time the whole class failed an assignment because they'd been taught/told the wrong thing. These are just the examples I can think of, off the top of my head.

The women who had warned me about the college, either because they'd worked there or had also had students there, had had experiences in diff department to the I.T one. I'm not saying it was all to do with the college, yes some was to do with DS, but I'm really glad that he didn't make a decision to not go to Uni based on he was only offered foundation after spending his sixth form years in a place that was not the 'right fit'. He could have also looked to go elsewhere through clearing but didn't want to, having fallen in love with where he's currently at.

My youngest does her GCSEs next year so will be looking at sixth form options for her and where DS studied is def not on the radar.

Tabbytabitha

Spendless wrote: »

At DS university, you were guaranteed halls if you put the Uni as your first choice. This was the same at the other (ex polys) we looked at (admittedly not that many). I'd sort of assumed all Unis worked the same. Son's uni even said they'd guarantee them first choice of which halls (they have about 6 diff ones) if he was to make them 1st choice.

Nowadays you don't put your university choices in order of preference so there's no way this could be the case - I think you must have misunderstood.