New City College, Ardleigh Green

One star is being generous, this is my third and final year at Havering College and my experience has been mediocre at best. Communication from the college is appalling and has been for all three of my years here. It took 2 years of me repeatedly giving my personal phone number, home address, email address and mother's phone number for me to actually get any kind of information out of them. All of this was given to them in person by me at least 7 times, I filled out the forms and waited for nothing. I had to find out information about trips and such from my friends that actually did receive texts. Work experience is mandatory for you to be able to pass the end of your course, even when I had a job in retail already I still had to do work experience or I wouldn't be allowed to finish. Every year has been a repeat of the last, but with more stress. I'm a level 3 Art and Design student and in my classes recently I've been cutting out pieces of cardboard to build my face as that is what the tutor asked of us. Yes, I'm serious. Tutors expect an email or phone call if you are going to be late to a class or not show up for any reason, but can't afford students the same courtesy, there have been multiple occasions where my class have traveled to the college and had to wait for 15-20 minutes before another teacher sees us and tells us our teacher isn't in. You will also be made to attend useless and unrelated classes like 'Digital Enterprise' and 'Tutorial' which are both time wasters that you are required to take to be allowed to pass the course. Digital Enterprise can be summarized as playing silly computer games about being a good citizen, you have to achieve a certain amount of points before they let you complete it. Tutorial is just sitting around and talking about things like British values and what to do in a terrorist attack. I can't think of a useful thing I've learnt during my time here, and I am good student, this is I problem I have observed in the college with other students. I wouldn't chance coming to this college, you might have a different experience but the only positive thing I can really think of is that most of my tutors were pleasant and helped where they could. Trust the reviews, it isn't worth your time.

Nice staff friendly and helpful, I have been studing in this college for two years now.this year I am going to change this college the cause of is the college does not have the course I'm looking for,if they do have the electrician course I will never leave this college.I have lots of amazing memoirs from this college ,best luck for others.

wish i could leave zero stars. absolutely awful place, was treated disgustingly badly by the clueless and unhelpful staff, communication was nonexistent. i left this place completely alone, traumatised, insulted and lost. i lost all interest in my favourite subject after leaving here and have not pursued anything further since, due to fear of making my trauma even worse. the only thing this college gave me was severe anxiety, loneliness, trauma, victim blaming and trust issues.
if you want to not have your life ruined before its even started id advise staying away from here. no idea how it's still open.

zero . no one helps, my lesson timetable and course was suddenly changed , no one is responsible for it . NEVER go to this place , you’ll get a bunch of stress and nothing else

Please avoid. I signed up for the Access to Higher Education Health Professions and left after 7 weeks upon finding out we had been taught the wrong curriculum. Lessons were ill prepared, staff spent a large portion of the lessons also complaining about the lack of communication in the department. No cover work was provided when staff were off so instead we would use this 'learning time' to work on our UCAS applications - the course ran two days a week so every lesson is valuable but what are we actually paying for if we're not learning or being taught anything? The enrolment day was an utter shambles which I should have taken as a warning sign not to continue. Please look at alternative colleges or consider distance learning.

My daughter was one of the worst hit with isolation during covid but spent all day everyday studying to get good grades as she wants to go to medical school to train as a doctor.
She chose this college to do level 3 health and social care and since starting has had nothing but agro with them, the students are there more than the teachers and are made to self study on the computer. They have mixed level 2 & level 3 meaning the level 3 students have to attend more to accommodate the other areas needed by the level 2 students.
I believe this section of some students life makes a big impact on if they are going to continue into uni or drop out and from what I have seen of the college they should be ashamed of themselves they are a disgrace to their profession and have really let the students down.

Thankfully it appears she is brighter than the English education system and has decided to finish her course and take the level 4 via an online provider also giving her more time to do other things as well.

I really wouldn’t recommend this place for your son/daughter if you wish for them to succeed.

Poorly trained tutors, Poorly managed computer storage for course work, Inconsistent timetables, Unacceptable Course managers.

Great Support staff

Average security

Poorly maintained rooms

FALSE Banner boasting 5 stars when majority of grades are bellow secondary school grades.

I was there for 5-6 years and spoke with over 1,000 students from there and a large percentage of them had a bad experience..

If more than a few people say the same thing or similar then it’s a problem!

WOULD NOT RECOMMEND

Amazing college, great and friendly staff, lots of support and if you pick the right course (which they also help with) you'll have an amazing time. The low rating on google breaks my heart, could not have asked for a better college to go to!