Croydon Adult Learning and Training (CALAT) Katharine Street, Croydon CR9 1ET

"I am here on a course but not really impressed with it was sent to update my IT skills for work but this is a very much more general course including internet security and smartphone use- not at all what I was expecting"

"In March this year I passed two exams and was advised the result will be emailed in one month. There was no email obviously so I contacted them, they told me to contact the exam centre, so I did. There they told me I should receive an email with the results and my certificates will be sent by post. Every week I contacted them regarding my results and every week I was getting the same response that my results should be sent via email. After I finally received my results via email I was advised my certificates will be delivered "as soon as they can". This obviously did not happen so I kept on calling and getting the same response "as soon as they can". Eventually I was told to contact the Croydon Calat centre (where the exams took place) as apparently my certificates were there so I can pick them up myself. Due to my long working hours I was not able to do that so I asked them if the certificates can be sent by post to my home address. I was advised they can send them via standard Royal Mail service but if Royal Mail loses them I would have to pay Calat £25 for each certificate duplicate. What the hell? A certificate like this, which proves my skills is a very important document which should be sent by Calat making sure it is delivered safely and promptly to the hands of the student. I find this situation unacceptable. I paid for this course almost £600 and Calat has a problem with spending £6 for the safe (recorded) delivery??? Additionally a few lessons were cancelled yet they refused a refund for these lessons. Very disappointed."

"It seems that the South Norwood centre which is where I went in the 2000’s to is no longer operating. So several years I did a basic computing course here entry and level 1 and they were ok, no problems with those tutors but not many people would need to do those courses these days. I also did other courses like OCR in Bookkeeping, Accounting and computerised Bookkeeping which also no longer seem to be offered anywhere. I am not going to name the tutor but I remember the tutor being a middle age individual, rude with no patience whatsoever to me and to a few students, some students may have not had a problem because they had already done courses in Accounting or similar contents before or had acquired work experience somewhere. After getting some work in the field (small roles) I thought to myself I don’t understand what the fuss was all about??? And I paid so much money for courses that will not get you far and can quite easily be learnt online for a fraction of the price without all the aggravation from a frustrated and tired tutor."

"The building is bit old, inside the offices and corridors have very cheap feeling to them which may not help you get inspired if you're planning to study. Just before my Life In UK test the organizer told us that proof of address need to have full name (first, initial and surname) detail, although I couldn't find this requirement anywhere online or on booking confirmation email (as my gas bill had my surname only). Organizer was waving some printed sheets of paper but could not tell me where to find this info online. Other than that everything went smoothly and I had no further issues."