Hopwood Hall College Saint Mary's Gate, Rochdale OL12 6RY

"The college advised me to do the first diploma in retail course because I never had the relevant qualification to do accounts. Once I completed this course they said I still can't do accounts. So they wasted a year of my time. Also most recently I enrolled in a coding and logic course and the teacher is disabled he can't speak much or move and because of this something that takes 20 min to do,takes 3 hours. Also when I had my exam the exam questions were nothing got to do with what we learnt in class. All other students said the same thing. The only reason I use this college is because it's closest to home."

"I’ve been a student here for 2 years and I’ve felt nothing but let down. I basically begged my mum to let me on this course and I was so eager and excited. After meeting my teacher and I can happily say my eagerness halved and my enthusiasm was completely gone. I felt nothing but let down. I was part of the art and design department and due to mainly one of my teachers I felt very bullied and favourites were very quickly recognised. Basically if you don’t want to go to uni then you’re treated like rubbish. My teacher was very nasty and treated me and my friend like dirt most of the time. We had multiple arguments which led to me crying in my free times and the favourites got lots of help and encouragement. At the end of the year we had to choose board to display our work and the favourites went in the centre front and myself and my friend were shoved in the back corner. We felt a lot of the time like we couldn’t even come back to college because of the horrible comments we would receive. I was constantly told my work was boring and a lot of very personal ideas were actually quite literally thrown in the bin and redrawn by my teacher which gave me a lack of connection to the project as it wasn’t even my own. My teachers Mike, Sarah, Becky and the trainee grace were absolutely amazing and I love them all, they were the only classes I really showed for and I loved them so much I actually most of the time showed up over an hour early to chat with them especially Sarah. They made me feel really welcome and helped me when I was most upset due to the other teacher. Becky gave me lots of encouragement throughout my first year and finally helped me passed maths after 2 years of trying. And Mike was fantastic and I loved hearing stories about his daughter. I hope grace goes on to do amazing things as I loved chatting with her and really wished I could’ve known her before college so we could’ve been personal friends. Annette had her times were she could be a really lovely person but I felt alot that she disliked me and it was hard to get along with her because I knew she never wanted to help despite her saying she did. Overall the college was really bad but I made an amazing friend along the way and out of everyone she has been my main support system. When everyone is in the same boat feeling the college can be really unfair then you tend to make friends alot faster."