Aspire Access Courses

Reviews, complaints and customer experiences (3)

I purchased the Access to HE Business Studies course around 2 years ago from Aspire. (Yes, I've been struggling with completing the course for 2 years! They allow 3 years to complete it.)

I did not find the moodle content very helpful. Assessment briefs were not very clear also and needed clarification which you will struggle to get.

Although the price of the course is very competitive, the service they provide is not very impressive.

Upon enrolling, their website stated I would get an 'expert tutor'. I did not. They only have assessors who give feedback only AFTER you have submitted assessments. This I felt was a big let down. There is NO TUTOR SUPPORT.

Just after 2 weeks into the course I enquired about my tutor and was told they do not provide tutor support and they do not mention they do in any of their materials. This is NOT TRUE. 'Expert tutors' are mentioned throughout their website. I was told 14 days have passed and I cannot get a refund.

I continued with the course and their admin are great at replying however the lack of tutor support made it very hard for me to grasp the information in this very intensive course. Had I done this same course at my local college I would have got a tonne of support and this would have positively impacted my grades.

If you do an online course with Open University for example, you would receive support unlike with Aspire.

I made a complaint to Aspire and they got back to me saying they will arrange further support however they did not for the next 3 months or so and said the delay is due to the pandemic. I then asked for a full refund and mentioned I that I shall be in contact with QAA.

They initially offered to refund the course fees minus the registration fee to the awarding body but I was not happy to pay this fee as this was their fault not mine. They then offered a full refund.

Save your money and go through your local college or a reputable online provider. Aspire do indeed seem like a new start-up.

The price for this course was really, REALLY good, but I wish I never bought it. This method of teaching and learning is not for me.

I'm still completing the diploma and I'm honestly really struggling. There actually isn't a tutor available to message or ask questions (there's an "assessor" but they are difficult to contact and at times the response I've got is vague or doesn't really answer my question directly). If someone had told me that I wouldn't have a tutor who checks in on my progress who I can directly AND regularly communicate with, I wouldn't have bought the course.

The supplement material:

Activities on the Moodle platform are either too basic or too complicated and the study material covers only a few concepts of the topic (you're expected to "find and use additional resources on your own"). So I've had to buy Chemistry textbooks and scour the internet for hours and hours, to find help and clarification on the topics that apparently they've already taught me on Moodle.

There's a lot of assumed knowledge too that isn't even mentioned but I'm guessing that's my own fault for having not taken GCSE Higher Chemistry(?!). Still, it said upon purchase that it's made for adults and is an accessible course. I didn't find this accessible at all. I was also told it'd be fine if I'd been out of GCSE science practice for a while. I previously did 90 credits with the Open University in STEM subjects, so I know I'm capable of succeeding with distance learning education...just not with Aspire Courses.

I can also back up what the other reviewer Jonathan has said: most materials used in the course are not referenced and a lot of the links are from YouTube. And there are so many grammatical and punctuation errors - additionally, I've found they've written Activity questions that don't match the answers section, or there are typos in the answers. That throws me off completely because I shouldn't need to check the answers section for accuracy! (I cross-checked online with reputable resources like chemguide and BBC who asked the exact same practice questions and found several inconsistencies).


This lack of guidance makes me feel absolutely hopeless. Currently I have a deadline for an assignment that I reckon I'm going to fail. And if you fail to meet the requirements, you get one opportunity to resubmit (capped at a pass) and if you still don't meet it, then you've failed the whole course. Obviously, having paid almost 2k for this course, it's a lot of pressure to pass. I previously wanted distinctions for every unit, but I'm feeling really rotten about it now...

This is just my personal experience. The admin team/contact centre are however very friendly and nice, always quick to respond, but I just don't think the course is thorough enough for what it said on the tin, and certainly doesn't cater to my desired learning approach.

A poor choice for learning. The materials used in this course are not referenced and most of them are from youtube. There are grammatical and punctuation errors that tell me the course has not been proofread.

Their admin team is unresponsive to questions and the feedback from the assessor is wishy-washy at best.

It would appear this is a lean startup trying to make some good money. If you have already completed A-Levels and are looking to change subjects and if you can find an independent subject-specific tutor, then you can expect your work to be graded fairly. Otherwise save you money or spend it elsewhere.