Winstanley College

Im every room I went in we was welcomed and a pupil of member of staff come to answer any of our questions and explain the courses.

Took my daughter to enrol today. Leading up to her exams she’s had suffered with panic attacks and put so much pressure on herself. Today she received her results and was over the moon as she should be passing all her exams with 6’s and 5’s. Winstanley College however not once congratulated her instead they ask her if she was expecting to do better? She wanted to do Maths A level but was told a 6 wasn’t good enough she needed a 7, we explained she was just 5 marks (one question) off a 7 and that she loves Maths it’s something she enjoys doing but apparently according to the deputy head it’s not about what you enjoy and she seemed to believe that my daughter just randomly choosing a different A level course would be better for her. The staff at the college were rude and they made my daughter feel inadequate she went from feeling so happy with her results to feeling like she wasn’t good enough, for us her next 2yrs is about the courses she does not the college and we soon walked out and took her to the other college she had also applied for and I am so pleased we did from the moment we walked in the way the staff spoke to her was 100% better the atmosphere was better and she gets to do all the A levels she wants to do in a college that is exactly the same standard as Winstanley if not better! Everything happens for a reason as they say I already know that her experience is going to be better than it would have been at Winstanley College!

gross lack of communication. teachers do not care if you are anything but an A* student. they do not help you progress at all. told to go to support sessions with a teacher who does not teach me, asked him for help on a question and said he didnt know and that i should check my notes. when i asked him for further help he refused and sat down and didnt help or get up once for the rest of the session, leaving us to do our own thing.
moving to a college and not staying at a sixth form was a mistake. they promised at the open days that you are 'not just a number' and teachers will get to know you personally. in my time there, not even two full years yet, i have had two geography teacher, two chemistry teachers and three personal tutors. the only consistent teacher i have had is my maths teacher who doesnt know my name and wouldnt be able to point me out in a corridor .
every teacher i have had uses lockdown as a big excuse to not teach us properly. in first year i had a diiferent geog teacher and, only at the end of second year are we realising how much content he skipped or didnt teach us in the full depth required. our new teacher even said he had been teaching us topics from different exam boards! my first geography exam is in less than two weeks and my teacher has said we are going to learn a new case study for a topic that we were taught in year 12. her justification was that the exam board changed the case study in the textbooks and that this new case study was better. i have no issue with this, however i dont believe that these textbooks come out two weeks before the first exam and that she had left it to the last minute. my second chemistry teacher says that subjects are too hard for us to understand so he skips the topic and questions on them. Surely a good teacher would teach it in a way we would understand, rather than skipping the topic completely??
my major problem however is with my geography coursework. we worked on it planning it over summer holidays first year, till February second year so five months we were working on it. i am an A* student in geography so my teacher knew that i would be aiming high. out of 20 people in my class, about five others were also A* students. we would do sections for homework and occasionally in a computer room during class time. earlier in the year i had an issue with my teacher which she accused me of some pretty ridiculous things and from then on she always had an attitude with me. other people in my class who were at the same grade as me were having meetings arranged by the teacher for feedback on the coursework. in the lessons when we were in a computer room she would go round the room and talk to people, giving them advise and telling them how to improve. i never got any feedback until two weeks before the deadline where she sent me a voice recording about formatting issues quote "put it in bold so people can see it." she offered no feedback on my actual study and claimed due to exam board regulations she couldnt write anything down for us- hence the voice recordings. however, after listening to my friends feedback, it was much more in depth than mine and very helpful and tailored to her study. we have recently got our grades back and i was very surprised and disappointed when i only just scraped a b (compared to 2019 grade boundaries). Why, when the teacher knew i wanted at least an A, did i receive no help at all for my actual study when other students in my class did? In five months i had a 6 minute voice recording. the teacher only has one other class and constantly complains about work load, almost guilt tripping us when we do homework's to not write more than 2 sides of A4 pages because she doesnt have the time to mark them. how are you supposed to answer a 33 marker in less than 2 sides of paper? homework often comes back weeks after we have done it with no feedback (again) and is followed by her telling us how little time she has. we still have not finished the course and we go on study leave next week and my friend who has another teacher finished 4 weeks ago!
maths is also an issue. i got an 8 at GCSE and and 8 in further maths GCSE and A level is hard! the teacher does well at explaining things and applying them in context so that we can understand them better however he also rushed topics. he sets so much homework that it is very hard to keep up, however he does not punish people who dont hand it in or make them face any consequences. only 3/16 people hand in the homework each week, which he shows us on teams. i feel as though students would benefit from less homework a week but if it was a mandatory hand in so that people are at least doing something.
facilities are okay. classrooms are nice, science labs are dated and it looks like most of money has been spent in social sciences/art/textiles building. there needs to be more areas where students can work. currently, for a college of around 2000 students, there are three rooms with a total of 150 computers. library is always full especially now with exams coming up. there are no rooms where you can work and talk, not loud but just not in complete silence which some people dont like. teachers say you can use free classrooms to go and work in, however most of the student lanyards dont open the doors, or you are not allowed in on your own which defeats the purpose. people result to sitting in their car or walking to the field and working there when its sunny (which is a rarity). the canteen food is okay but the prices are high and they run out towards the end of lunch. their slogan is "more than just chips" but people wouldnt want most of the food they offer even if it was free. i have a food allergy so the only thing i have been able to eat for the past two years are chips. they used to do gluten free sandwiches in the first year but they stopped. hardly any vegetarian options. most people i know swap between a cup of chicken nuggets or a portion of chips. Its luck of the draw if you get a good PT (personal tutor) and most of the teachers on the student service desks clearly dont want to be there and are rude.
overall my experience at winstanley has been negative and unless you do an awful lot of independent work and teach yourself, you will not succeed to the level you want. my advice is, unless you love a subject and have a passion/ interest in it- dont pick it. it doesnt matter if you did well at GCSE because a levels are completely different. first year definitely does matter!! hopefull in the future it will be different- especially once covid is gone, however if i could go back in time, i would not choose winstanley.

Attended here last year. You are forced to stay in this college all day and it becomes tiring. Facilities were amazing, however staff were not. Did not bother teaching properly, more than half of my classes had to drop out to change colleges including me. Threatened they would pull me from doing my exams or be forced to do AS LEVELS (first year qualifications not accepted in UNI). I recently changed colleges and I am doing better than ever, straight A*’s. If you don’t want to go through the pain I did, do not attend this college. They don’t care about you only the money they get from you.