I have had children at both colleges. Without doubt Peter Symonds is a better college. We found the teaching at Barton Peveril to be very poor with confused guidance, unstructured lessons that have no subject title or focus, little or no feedback (example of feedback in an art subject ' that's good - keep doing it , get rid of that bit' so you can see no explanation. We have found that the art teaching at Peter Symonds to be wonderful with excellent guidance and each student is taught to encourage his/her own unique abilities, rather than the lecturer trying to shape all students to one mould (which is what happened at Barton Peveril). At Peter Symonds the lecturers seem to be very interested in their subjects compared with those at Barton Peveril who seem to be just 'doing a job'.
Apart from that general overview, from personal experience I can not recommend Barton Peveril college. My daughter attended a few years ago and early in her studies, she was recommended by one of her lecturers to apply for Oxbridge as she had the kind of profile and results that showed she had the ability to study there. For the course she wanted to do, she needed straight A grades. She started her A levels achieving these grades.
However, in one art subject, she was taught by a newly qualified teacher and unfortunately the lecturer was very poor. As a result, her grades in this subject quickly dropped from an A to a C grade due to extremely poor tuition, biased direction (in favour of the lecturer's personal preferences) and confused guidance. When I asked the college for clearer direction and maybe additional tuition from a separate lecturer, to help to ensure her grades could be improved in this subject, I was told by the college that this would be OK and a meeting was arranged. During the meeting, I asked for the matter to be handled tactfully and with diplomacy so as not to offend the lecturer in question.
However, the head of subject happened to be best friends with the NQT and so, instead of the head assisting my daughter, she decided to embarrass her for daring to question the ability of her friend. Then the lecturer in question was involved but was angry at having her ability questioned, and, as a result, started to bully my daughter. This bullying continued for several weeks and subsequently left my daughter too scared to go to college. She started to suffer panic attacks at the thought of being bullied or embarrassed by the lecturer in every class and eventually had to pull out of college.
She was left housebound for 18 months and couldn't go anywhere without someone going with her - she had had her confidence shattered and felt completely judged by everyone, just as she had been judged by the bullying lecturer.
I tried to resolve the situation and asked for support from the college, but when I told the college that the lecturer had been bullying my daughter, the college closed ranks, refused to accept any responsibility, and then had the audacity to blame my daughter (the victim of the bullying) saying it was her fault that she couldn't cope with the bullying because she was 'sensitive'.
Apart from the fact that my daughter suffered huge trauma, the experience also cost us thousands in counselling and additional tuition fees so she could continue her studies online. Luckily my daughter succeeded in her online course, but still to this day suffers panic attacks. The college behaved abysmally and taught us that if you dare to question the poor teaching standards of an educational institution you will suffer the consequences.
Barton Peveril came highly recommended to us, but we learned that the reality is very different.