Doing a levels from home?

Ive been in college for 2 years, and am planning on going back this september to gain more a levels as due to personal reasons, i was unable to do as many in the first 2 years as i would have liked. However, i live with my partner, and have a summer job and am looking to possible do my a levels from home, so i can earn money whilst i learn? has anyone tried this? has anyone got any ideas of how i go about this? or where i can find out about it? ive looked online and its like £250 per course, which is a bit too expensive. any ideas?

Reply 1

Zut alors

Make sure you check that you can actually sit and take the A levels at a local college, as a lot of these online courses offer all the materials or say they have online tutors who will call you via the telephone or email you with homework and give you a book list to buy the books locally at Waterstones or W H Smiths, or on Amazon, however they are evasive about where you actually take the exam or about coursework from the exam board.

Locally colleges don't take external candidates usually because a) it messes up their league tables and b) they don't like the cheating elements to it (ie they don't know you from Adam, haven't been teaching you to know what standard you are, there are issues over predicted grades, fake passports, people hired to take exams for others etc.

Therefore you'll find 99.9% of local colleges refuse to take external candidates, even when they do, there are certain requirements ie teachers at their school have to have privately taught you etc which depends on the teachers wanting to or having spare time, exhorbitant costs involved etc.

Make sure you ensure from the outset where exactly you'll be taking the exams, how that is organised, and any coursework issues, ie who will be marking this, is that authorised by the exam board, what are the time lines etc.

Good Luck.

Reply 2

charkate_x

OP

Zut alors

Make sure you check that you can actually sit and take the A levels at a local college, as a lot of these online courses offer all the materials or say they have online tutors who will call you via the telephone or email you with homework and give you a book list to buy the books locally at Waterstones or W H Smiths, or on Amazon, however they are evasive about where you actually take the exam or about coursework from the exam board.

Locally colleges don't take external candidates usually because a) it messes up their league tables and b) they don't like the cheating elements to it (ie they don't know you from Adam, haven't been teaching you to know what standard you are, there are issues over predicted grades, fake passports, people hired to take exams for others etc.

Therefore you'll find 99.9% of local colleges refuse to take external candidates, even when they do, there are certain requirements ie teachers at their school have to have privately taught you etc which depends on the teachers wanting to or having spare time, exhorbitant costs involved etc.

Make sure you ensure from the outset where exactly you'll be taking the exams, how that is organised, and any coursework issues, ie who will be marking this, is that authorised by the exam board, what are the time lines etc.

Good Luck.

thanks ! do you think they re more likely to allow me to si the exam, because i haveattanded the college... I think they do allow external exams

Reply 3

Zut alors

If it's going back to your college then ask because they already know you, it's easier because you already know they do your exam board etc, know your way around the college.

I'm not sure they'd allow you to just take the exams without attending because they'd have league table issues, otherwise everyone would be saying they need to work. A lot of colleges have problems with no attendance kids and the teachers then get militant and refuse to enter students for exams. A lot of teachers now have performance related pay too.

I'd ask your college what to do, as you can't be the only person in this boat of having no money, problems arising.

A lot of these online courses have questionable quality and can't guarantee that you will be able to take the exam.

For instance, a year ago I wanted to private study Spanish at home and I looked into Learn Direct and they gave me all this marketing speel about a tutor will email me homework each week and email me answers etc and call me up and talk me through stuff (which is better than my own teachers at school!). When I pinned them down to the fact I wanted to actually take the exam which was imperative for me, they were all vague and said I had to organise it myself. When I called up a few random colleges (didn't want my school knowing I wanted taking an A level on the quiet), all the colleges said no due to reasons stated above.

Probably doing via your school might be the best idea and come to some arrangement with a teacher you like (ie you will get a progress report each term whilst you work). However if you are working you will have to be mega organised ie working and studying can be killing and you will have to have a sympathetic partner as I never had that distraction, because they will get the hump if you're working all week and then studying all the time at the weekend.

I still think having a chat with a teacher at school can give you some good advice.

Good Luck.

Reply 4

siduk09

Wow - I hadn't considered that there may be a problem with the actual exams. I thought you just paid exam fees to sit the exam and then just turned up at a random college on the day to take the paper! I would have thought the exam boards (AQA, OCR, Edexel, etc) would be the ones having the last say on who gets to sit the paper.

Reply 5

written on my heart

1

um im thinking of doing A level biology with ICS at home. are there any problems with that company? has anyone studied with them before?

Doing a levels from home?

Related discussions

Articles for you