Access course SWAP failed entry ( So annoyed )

Hello.
I must admit I am rather dissapointed in the whole process of further education and trying to improve my own circumstances. My situation is as follows.

I am in my mid 30's and decided that I wanted to go to university. In order to achieve this with a view to studying law, I thought it would be best to first undertake an access course. I was aware that universities around Glasgow offer access courses but I came across an access course provider called SWAP Scottish Wider Access Programme which prepares those mature students who have been out of education for over five years. In my case I had been out of education for nearly two decades !

So I applied for humanities and social sciences and got an interview after submitting a personal statement. After the interview I got a conditional offer subject to completing a "Core Skill Profile". This in my case consisted of an English and maths multi-choice assessment. I completed this and got a "working very well at level 3" in both assessments.

My results then get forwarded to my interviewer who asks the office to withdraw my application due to not meeting the required level for entry to the swap course which she said required a minimum level 2.

Now someone please correct me if I'm wrong but isnt the whole purpose of an access programme, to prepare those out of education for a considerable period of time ? So how am I meant to know absolutely everything about fractions and the finer points about grammer and so on, which is what my assessments mostly consisted of ? Swap being a specialist mature student education provider, did they expect me to be at a degree level as a prerequisite for entry ?

Had I been accepted for this course I would have taken extra tuition out of the classroom, and would have done whatever it takes to get to a standard required. I currently have two children who have a maths tutor twice a week and I could easily have joined them.

I feel that the whole procedure has been an utter waste of time and in my opinion the college has placed a barrier in my way without allowing me the opportunity to prove myself. A multi choice test which in so far as the maths was concerned, would have been alien to me anyway and most mature students will testify to that.
Isnt that the whole point about going back to college ?

I would like any advice as to what I should do now, and if anyone has had similar experiences
I'm currently employed as a trade union rep.

Many thanks.

Reply 1

kirstyk123

What college did you apply to? Was it through SWAP west of Scotland if so give them a call. I would assume it would be Kenny Anderson you would speak to. I am in my final weeks of a SWAP access course (access to university) I was 31 when I started this course and had been out of education for almost 16 years. I did not require to sit any test prior to entry. I applied got an interview was offered a place accepted then started the course. I had no previous exams (not even standard grade) maths and English are part of the course. I have been offered MA Classical civilisations at Glasgow university so best advice I can give is go directly to SWAP. Hope this helps and don't give up. This Access course has been one of the best experiences of my life.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 2

Johnnydark

Many thanks for your reply KirstyK. I am not averse to taking organisations to task believe me and this is exactly how I feel at this moment in time.
I will make contact with the gentleman at SWAP and state my case with him.

The college in question here is Langside, now named Clyde College who have merged with Cardonald and Anniesland. Over the years, members of my family have applied for various courses here and after acknowledgement of their applications, they get letters informing that the courses "are full".. So either they have very bad organisation at the college or there is another reason.

I will shortly be raising a formal complaint with the board of management and I will be in touch with SWAP first thing tomorrow morning.

Many thanks KirstyK and best of luck at uni.

Reply 3

Schadenfreude65

I don't know if it works the same way in Scotland as it does in England, but here, colleges can be penalised financially if their drop-out rate is too high. The assessment tests are meant to weed out people who are unlikely to be able to cope with the course and who therefore have a high risk of dropping out. I'm not insinuating that this is so in your case, but if you still wish to pursue this, it would be very worthwhile doing some revision in maths and English and asking for the opportunity to reapply. It will not only help you to get accepted onto the course, but will benefit you enormously during the course. The workload on Access can be incredibly high, so the better prepared you are, the better you will do. You shouldn't expect the college to teach you everything you will need. There is strong emphasis both in Access and at university on independent learning, and the sooner you start taking charge of your own learning, the better.

Best of luck.

Reply 4

Johnnydark

I am in no doubt that the course will be tough and I had made arrangements out of college study to have extra tuition.
My point is that for a prospective student who has been away from study for almost twenty years, would obviously have a certain disadvantage in the assessments that were given to me to do. Had the college given me a heads up PRIOR to this assessment then I'm sure my opportunity would not have been a wasted one. I was told precisely ONE day prior to the test what I would be doing.

Access course SWAP failed entry ( So annoyed )

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you