Experiences of colleges in Woking area offering BTECs

[HoxtonHalt]

My year 11 DS is at a school with a 6th form which only offers A-levels. He would like to do BTECs or equivalent. Does anyone have any experience of Woking College for Business / IT or a college he can get to by train in the area? He may need to retake Maths and English also.

We have been to an open day at Brooklands College in Weybridge but he didn't like it. Maybe we should look again though as they seem to do BTECs at different levels which could work well, depending on his grades in the summer.

Esher?

@ainawatson thanks for the reply. We have been to open days at both. Woking seemed good and he liked the feel of the place. The open day at Brooklands was ok. They both felt very different, Woking more like a school environment and the head teacher gave a talk. Brooklands felt more like a mini campus but no idea about how a typical day would be there. A trip back to Brooklands might be needed I think.

My DS1 did IT BTEC alongside an A-level at Woking College, he did very well and went on to do an IT related degree and is now working in IT and doing very well.

DS2 did the same BTEC and also a BTEC in uniformed services and did well - not as good as DS1 but he is less motivated so not the college's fault! He plans to.pursue a career in uniformed services.

I wouldn't say Woking College is like a school. It's very much a college environment and on registration day you can then tell just how huge it is in terms of student numbers and diversity.

@Creepybookworm - thanks, good to hear some real feedback as we don’t know anyone who has been there

My eldest was at Woking college for the past two years - he did a levels rather than btechs, but he had friends who did both / a mix. He really liked it there. Definitely a clearly different atmosphere from school - it was brilliant for him just maturing, getting more self-driven and organised, stepping stone to uni etc. Normal college things like wearing whatever clothes you like, first names for the teachers, only need to be in college when you have lessons and you can leave the site whenever (though they have lots of space for your own study if you have free periods during the day and don’t want to head home - mine usually stayed and worked at college in study periods).

We are about 45 mins walk away so he just walked it, but it’s a pretty easy walk from the train station and there are loads of trains in and out of Woking.

Would definitely recommend it - i remember one thing the previous head said when we looked round a couple of years ago - he said “we are proudly comprehensive. It’s what we do and we do it really well” or something like that. They genuinely want to do well by everyone, across the board of whatever qualifications they’re doing.

@TallagallaPenguin great, thanks for the reply, very reassuring, sounds like a good choice