Can I get an Open University degree without A Levels?

Hi, I posted on here once before, I'm not sure if you can read my last post easily so I'll summarise as best I can.

I'm 19 this year, I'm autistic and I dropped out of school before doing my GCSEs, because it was 2021 I got the results but I never went back to do A Levels but would like to try and get them now, online, so I can eventually go to university if I'm up to it. I'm also planning on moving to Ireland next year with my family.

I was planning to do them online but a helpful person told me about Access to Higher Education. I researched it a bit and my mum spoke to a guy who she'd talked to before about my school stuff. Basically, at least from what I can gather, doing an English Access course online is not that simple, they seem to be more for practical jobs which is understandable but I don't really have any interest in that. There are some for English around but not on anything that guy sent us, and the ones that do exist have little to no information on the actual courses.

So I sort of found myself back at square one. At this point I've decided it would probably be unrealistic for me to do school at the same time as moving, and I'll probably wait until I'm settled in Ireland, despite my wishes to finish school as soon as possible. I know some people could manage both but I know myself and I think I'd get burned out and stressed very quickly.

At this point I feel a bit relieved to not have to worry about it quite as soon but I've still been researching a bit and I realised that Open University degrees don't seem to require A Levels. This suprised me but I can't find anything that contradicts it. I'm thinking about doing an English Language & Literature Ba Hons on there when I'm comfortable with doing so, but I wanted to ask if anyone else can find if that's possible, since I'm thinking they just don't see the need to mention A Levels, as most people get them. I also wanted to ask if their degrees hold as much weight as a regular in-person one; everywhere online seems to suggest they're the same but it's nice just to get opinions.

Thank you for reading and any help!

Open University

Reply 1

StevenWong1

The OU has no entry requirements relating to education level or grades. Hence Open.

The content of the first stage modules from my experience starts at a really low level - and brings everyone up to the same point for the second stage modules which are much harder (at least mine are anyway).

Reply 2

ishastar

I'm currently doing an online access to he course and I was in a similar situation to you. Access courses can get you to university, in fact I'm approaching my end date and I am going to university in September. I did mine with East Sussex College, I'll attach a link to an english access course that you can check out if you'd like: https://adult.escg.ac.uk/online-courses/access-to-he-online/english-studies/

I'm unsure about the credibility of Open University courses but I hope this helps you in some way.