GDL UoL vs BPP - current situation/quality of teaching

[ellejones]

Hi,

I am considering doing GDL at UoL or BPP (online, part-time). I recently read a lot of negative reviews about BPP. I read through all of them, however they seem to be from a few months ago. I am curious, if the situation has improved since then and if the issues have been resolved. The reason I opt more for BPP is that the course is starting already in May, saves a few months vs September start.

Is here someone who has studied online part-time at one of these unis and could share experience? Or even if you study full-time, I would still appreciate some insight about the current situation. I am mostly interested in the quality of teaching, fairness of the exams, access to the course materials, career advice, etc.

Thanks!

 

[hd112211]

I studied both the GDL and LPC with ULaw with the LPC being partly via remote learning last year due to COVID. All in all I think they made the best of a bad situation and the delivery of my LPC courses were as good as could be expected. I certainly got what I needed out of them. Having said that I think it depends a lot on the individual tutors and how effective they are at remote teaching and how willing they are to be available to their students to support them during and outside the scheduled online classes.

I don't have any direct experience with BPP but a ULaw tutor who had previously worked at BPP remarked that the organisation and timetabling at ULaw was a lot better for students. That was pre-COVID though. I have also heard of the plights that BPP students suffered during the past year, such as not receiving timetables until the day before starting their course etc.

Personally I would still recommend ULaw based on my own experience of their in-person and online teaching, combined with what I have heard of BPP.

 

[Nicktim]

Hi,
I'm just finishing the PGDL at BPP now, studied full-time since September.

Quality of teaching - the teaching has been one of the few positives of studying at BPP. The tutors are very knowledgeable and all ex-solicitors in their fields with lots of experience. They are really friendly and approachable and make the classes really interesting. HOWEVER, I am being sponsored by a firm who are part of the 'City Consortium' which is a group of firms who work quite closely with BPP so the cynic in me believes they tend to give some of the best tutors to the groups of students being sponsored by firms that are commercially important to BPP. I've heard from others who aren't being sponsored that they haven't had the same experience with the quality of teaching but I can only really comment on the teaching I've had which has been excellent.

Fairness of the exams - I'm not really too clued up on this but as far as I'm aware this is regulated by the SRA so I don't think there is likely to be a significant difference between the two institutions in terms of difficulty or fairness. I haven't found the exams at BPP particularly challenging if you keep on top of the huge volumes of material and revise before them. We were the first cohort of students on the new format 'PGDL' which I believe is slightly different to the old GDL in that the assessments are practical (advising fictitious clients/colleagues on legal issues) but the pass rate seems fairly high from what I've heard.

Access to course materials - Not great! Possibly impacted by COVID but we were told that we would get textbooks and hard copies of the material but then at the last minute BPP decided there would be no hard copy materials for the PGDL and everything would be online. Great for the environment and for BPP's costs but the volume of material is pretty heavy and it can be quite difficult accessing absolutely everything online. There are also quite a few mistakes on BPP's online material which you can report but it rarely gets changed. Sometimes in a class you can be trying to flick between the virtual classroom, the class materials and all of your notes as well as online textbooks on one small screen. I've had to invest in a bigger laptop, a second screen and bought my own versions of some of the textbooks etc. If you aren't being sponsored and you've already paid a pretty hefty amount to study the course I imagine it would be pretty annoying!

In summary - quality of teaching has been excellent (but I've heard that varies if you are/aren't being sponsored and which centre you're at), overall organisation and access to course materials has been pretty poor. It's unclear how much of that can be attributed to COVID, first year of a new style course or just general incompetence.

 

[shadow-demon]

Hi,
I'm just finishing the PGDL at BPP now, studied full-time since September.

Quality of teaching - the teaching has been one of the few positives of studying at BPP. The tutors are very knowledgeable and all ex-solicitors in their fields with lots of experience. They are really friendly and approachable and make the classes really interesting. HOWEVER, I am being sponsored by a firm who are part of the 'City Consortium' which is a group of firms who work quite closely with BPP so the cynic in me believes they tend to give some of the best tutors to the groups of students being sponsored by firms that are commercially important to BPP. I've heard from others who aren't being sponsored that they haven't had the same experience with the quality of teaching but I can only really comment on the teaching I've had which has been excellent.

Fairness of the exams - I'm not really too clued up on this but as far as I'm aware this is regulated by the SRA so I don't think there is likely to be a significant difference between the two institutions in terms of difficulty or fairness. I haven't found the exams at BPP particularly challenging if you keep on top of the huge volumes of material and revise before them. We were the first cohort of students on the new format 'PGDL' which I believe is slightly different to the old GDL in that the assessments are practical (advising fictitious clients/colleagues on legal issues) but the pass rate seems fairly high from what I've heard.

Access to course materials - Not great! Possibly impacted by COVID but we were told that we would get textbooks and hard copies of the material but then at the last minute BPP decided there would be no hard copy materials for the PGDL and everything would be online. Great for the environment and for BPP's costs but the volume of material is pretty heavy and it can be quite difficult accessing absolutely everything online. There are also quite a few mistakes on BPP's online material which you can report but it rarely gets changed. Sometimes in a class you can be trying to flick between the virtual classroom, the class materials and all of your notes as well as online textbooks on one small screen. I've had to invest in a bigger laptop, a second screen and bought my own versions of some of the textbooks etc. If you aren't being sponsored and you've already paid a pretty hefty amount to study the course I imagine it would be pretty annoying!

In summary - quality of teaching has been excellent (but I've heard that varies if you are/aren't being sponsored and which centre you're at), overall organisation and access to course materials has been pretty poor. It's unclear how much of that can be attributed to COVID, first year of a new style course or just general incompetence.

Did you not see the amount of people that failed each module on the results' spreadsheet? lol.

 

[Jessica Booker]

If it is of interest, GDL successful completion of course (e.g. complete course and pass) on average across all institutions is only 60%. And that rate varies massivesly betwwen 100% and 35% depending on the institution.

So high failure rates, compared to what you might be used to at university, will be fairly "normal".

 

[Jane Smith]

I agree with what Nicktim said. I am not on the BPP PGDL but am a lawyer and two of my children were on that course full time so know a fair bit about it. Their view and mine was the BPP teaching was very good (as my 2 older daughters found a few years ago and bear in mind a lot of the big firms use BPP and will under the SQE system too). We also know someone taking the GDP full time with ULaw to compare this year. Both BPP and ULaw are fine, but my preference, despite this year's pandemic and new PGDL difficulties, are to stick with BPP. However going to either will be fine for most people.

I agree , as someone stated above, that in September last year there were problems with BPP such as people not having timetables, no time to do the pre reading before the course etc although I think my two had theirs on time albeit at last minute. One of my children still has not had their student card by the way - minor thing but is typical of how it can be hard to get answers from admin. One has searched all emails for the date of results day for example and it may be his fault and he missed an email, but he has not found that date yet. I presume it will be a day next month. Part of the problem has been it is a new course. I like many of the elements of the new course, however and it finishes in April. It won't be new from now on so may be better in May. I think comkpany law which is new this year had too many slides and was not as consistent in terms of depth (it was too detailed) compared with the other modules but that was a relatively minor issue. Secondly, there has been covid and therefore the course and the exams have been 100% online. That has worked fine for my two once the first week was over and they were used to how the IT/systems worked and decided how and when to take part in the online workshops. We don't know yet if they have passed this term's exams/the course yet however.......

If you could start BPP in May and if you go with ULaw would start in September I would go for BPP in May just to get going with it (if you are sure of what you want to do and have considered SQE issues/choices).

Shadow above rightly points out that there were marks for your group with anonymous numbers for each person so you could see where you fell within that group and how your marks com,pare to those in the other group - which I think is very helpful (and my children were in different groups so could also compare between the two groups too).

[Apologies for the intrusion of a parent/lawyer on here but I have got slightly interested in the courses and also the changes to SQE2...]

 

[Alice G]

I agree with what Nicktim said. I am not on the BPP PGDL but am a lawyer and two of my children were on that course full time so know a fair bit about it. Their view and mine was the BPP teaching was very good (as my 2 older daughters found a few years ago and bear in mind a lot of the big firms use BPP and will under the SQE system too). We also know someone taking the GDP full time with ULaw to compare this year. Both BPP and ULaw are fine, but my preference, despite this year's pandemic and new PGDL difficulties, are to stick with BPP. However going to either will be fine for most people.

I agree , as someone stated above, that in September last year there were problems with BPP such as people not having timetables, no time to do the pre reading before the course etc although I think my two had theirs on time albeit at last minute. One of my children still has not had their student card by the way - minor thing but is typical of how it can be hard to get answers from admin. One has searched all emails for the date of results day for example and it may be his fault and he missed an email, but he has not found that date yet. I presume it will be a day next month. Part of the problem has been it is a new course. I like many of the elements of the new course, however and it finishes in April. It won't be new from now on so may be better in May. I think comkpany law which is new this year had too many slides and was not as consistent in terms of depth (it was too detailed) compared with the other modules but that was a relatively minor issue. Secondly, there has been covid and therefore the course and the exams have been 100% online. That has worked fine for my two once the first week was over and they were used to how the IT/systems worked and decided how and when to take part in the online workshops. We don't know yet if they have passed this term's exams/the course yet however.......

If you could start BPP in May and if you go with ULaw would start in September I would go for BPP in May just to get going with it (if you are sure of what you want to do and have considered SQE issues/choices).

Shadow above rightly points out that there were marks for your group with anonymous numbers for each person so you could see where you fell within that group and how your marks com,pare to those in the other group - which I think is very helpful (and my children were in different groups so could also compare between the two groups too).

[Apologies for the intrusion of a parent/lawyer on here but I have got slightly interested in the courses and also the changes to SQE2...]

Not at all - it is really interesting to hear your perspective and thoughts on this

 

[Daniel Boden]

I posted this in another thread but just to add my perspective, I've done the GDL at ULaw this year and have been really impressed with the care and attention they have to students in the pandemic e.g. with exam extensions, well-organised timetables, good quality teaching, sending out physical copies of materials etc.

They've done a good job and have actively listened to any concerns from students and have implemented them so tbh I've been really impressed and so it seems, judging by what I've read online anyway, that they dealt with the craziness of the last year much more effectively than BPP.

Equally, although the PGDL at BPP has a company law module, ULaw has a Law of Organisations module option which is effectively the same thing and covers partnerships, LLPs, LTDs, private equity, company finance etc so it's also really helpful for developing commercial awareness and those interested in working in corporate law

I also think ULaw may be a bit cheaper than BPP but don't quote me on that haha

 

[ellejones]

Many thanks for all your replies, I appreciate them. I have started my PGDL at BPP. I must say my experience with BPP until now is best described with the word "SHOCKING". And the best word that describes this univesrity is "CHAOS". I must say that none of people from my group enjoys it. We have huge struggles with admin stuff, IT, getting in touch with the tutors (I am a rep so I see it all). The speed at the lectures is crazy. I really regret I have joined. I tried to withdraw after the first week but I would have lost a few thousdans. What I think is absolutely unfair as I was not aware how bad it all is. The only reason I joined BPP is because I wanted to start ASAP not in Sept. I wish I have gone to UoL, now it is too late! I was also tempted by their pro bono clinics. Try to get a place there, this is another story

 

[hd112211]

Many thanks for all your replies, I appreciate them. I have started my PGDL at BPP. I must say my experience with BPP until now is best described with the word "SHOCKING". And the best word that describes this univesrity is "CHAOS". I must say that none of people from my group enjoys it. We have huge struggles with admin stuff, IT, getting in touch with the tutors (I am a rep so I see it all). The speed at the lectures is crazy. I really regret I have joined. I tried to withdraw after the first week but I would have lost a few thousdans. What I think is absolutely unfair as I was not aware how bad it all is. The only reason I joined BPP is because I wanted to start ASAP not in Sept. I wish I have gone to UoL, now it is too late! I was also tempted by their pro bono clinics. Try to get a place there, this is another story

Sorry to hear of your experience so far. Sadly the issues that you report are all issues I have heard of from other BPP students, especially since the outset of the pandemic. Course pace however was something that I was made aware of by a former tutor at BPP during my own GDL studies at ULaw.

Fingers crossed things settle down for you and get better!

 

[Jenn-H]

I posted this in another thread but just to add my perspective, I've done the GDL at ULaw this year and have been really impressed with the care and attention they have to students in the pandemic e.g. with exam extensions, well-organised timetables, good quality teaching, sending out physical copies of materials etc.

They've done a good job and have actively listened to any concerns from students and have implemented them so tbh I've been really impressed and so it seems, judging by what I've read online anyway, that they dealt with the craziness of the last year much more effectively than BPP.

Equally, although the PGDL at BPP has a company law module, ULaw has a Law of Organisations module option which is effectively the same thing and covers partnerships, LLPs, LTDs, private equity, company finance etc so it's also really helpful for developing commercial awareness and those interested in working in corporate law

I also think ULaw may be a bit cheaper than BPP but don't quote me on that haha

Hi Daniel,

I am choosing between BPP and Ulaw to start my gdl this september. II was wondering if the ELITE platform is good and whether you get lectures and classes recorded? Also is it like BPP's VLE where you can test yourself on each topic via the VLE through quizlet type games?

 

[Tebs]

Many thanks for all your replies, I appreciate them. I have started my PGDL at BPP. I must say my experience with BPP until now is best described with the word "SHOCKING". And the best word that describes this univesrity is "CHAOS". I must say that none of people from my group enjoys it. We have huge struggles with admin stuff, IT, getting in touch with the tutors (I am a rep so I see it all). The speed at the lectures is crazy. I really regret I have joined. I tried to withdraw after the first week but I would have lost a few thousdans. What I think is absolutely unfair as I was not aware how bad it all is. The only reason I joined BPP is because I wanted to start ASAP not in Sept. I wish I have gone to UoL, now it is too late! I was also tempted by their pro bono clinics. Try to get a place there, this is another story

Hello… which BPP campus are you studying at please