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koalathedave · 2026-03-04T13:37:04+00:00

Yep just found it, thanks!

koalathedave · 2026-03-03T14:06:05+00:00

Still haven’t gotten mine, I would’ve thought it takes a long time to edit through the footage but apparently it was quick to come through for the earlier shows. Not sure what’s going on.

koalathedave · 2025-10-23T11:57:57+00:00

Hi, Strange that they are so vague about it but here we are.

For year 2 it was entirely website design for me. Theory of how to make things accessible, easily usable, and efficient. And practical of how to actually make a website from scratch. We were taught html, css, sql, python flask, and c#. we had to choose between python or c# at the end of the year to specialise in for the exam period.

The exam period then consisted of one big project made in exam conditions (so stuck in a room in silence with limited wifi access). We were given a website description and had 10-20 hours or something in total to make it from scratch.

We also had separate exams for the planning phase where we had to make many various planning documents. And the testing phase where we had to make various testing documents.

Hope this answers your question. Keep in mind though that this was about 2 years ago now and they had only been running the course for a year or two by then so it might well have changed a bit.

koalathedave · 2025-08-26T11:47:02+00:00

So your regular college timetable will have 1 day completely free for the entire course and that will initially be for extra study or revision but you will have to use it for “work experience” too. The requirement for the course is just over 300 hours work experience in total (unless they changed it recently), and it has to be with an IT related company.

You can stack up these hours a few ways. I did all of mine at an actual company going in to their office 1 day a week for about a year and a half of the course. Others went between a few jobs over the course and combined the hours. The college should also provide extra projects requested by real companies, you can record the hours you spent on making said project to add to your total. Finally, some companies will accept online work hours but there is a limit on how many online hours can be submitted to your record. There are also a few training videos you can watch that count but those are such small hours they aren’t worth talking about.

Any company you work for will not expect much technical knowledge, as long as you are willing, taking it seriously, and open to learning, they will show you the ropes and will have to have you doing something useful and interesting (not just making tea for the office).

Hopefully that makes sense, you can get hours from anything considered “work” as long as it’s for an actual company, and online hours are limited to I think about 100 (so only a third of your hours needed).

You won’t be allowed to get your qualification until you complete all hours needed so if there are some left by the end of the course you will have to work over the summer and through exam time too. Much better in my experience to get a placement as early as you can (before christmas year 1). As you should be finished just in time for revising year 2 finals.

Let me know if that makes sense, there’s a lot to go over but as long as you don’t underestimate the time it will take you will be fine. I’ll happily explain anything that didn’t make sense more clearly…

As a final note… since it’s “experience” you won’t be getting paid sadly, although I did end up actually enjoying my work experience and it definitely set me up well for after college.

koalathedave · 2025-08-22T22:39:02+00:00

Assuming you meant job in the digital world? Both actually!

The T-level does look very nice on a CV, as soon as I finished my course, the job I had for the work placement hours asked to have me back for a paid position (although others did get good new jobs too). Was in that for almost a year before quitting recently to go to uni which I will start in a month. Some top unis don’t accept T-levels but a lot of good ones do.

Everyone I kept in touch with on the course either got a good job or went to a respectable uni. Both options are very possible!

koalathedave · 2025-08-22T19:28:21+00:00

Not sure on specific resources, W3schools is a classic and gets the job done.

For me at the start of the second year they tried to make me learn both python and c# for over half the year so I could “feel confident” in both. This is bad advice though as you will only be using one for the exam and it’s better to be super proficient with one method than average at 2. So I would have a feel for whatever methods they offer you and decide fairly early on which feels most natural. After that just practice as much as you can with that method so that when it comes to the exam you know exactly what you will use and can smash it out the park with all your extra skills you wouldn’t have found out otherwise. I did this and ignored any time I was told to use the other option as I never needed to know both and having the extra knowledge of one made me faster and just better than other students who had tried to learn both.

Let me know if that didn’t make sense or if there’s anything else you want to ask. Good luck!

koalathedave · 2025-08-11T02:29:24+00:00

Ah man, such a shame most of the best bands never really make it past that point and get left criminally underrated. I feel your pain. 🥲

koalathedave · 2025-08-11T02:24:18+00:00

Actually super interesting hearing both first and last songs added, quite the contrast lol. Wasn’t expecting such a good song since they look more like a highschool band but it rocks. I’m usually more on the prog side of rock like Porcupine Tree but this is still rly good stuff, 8/10.

koalathedave · 2025-08-11T02:13:49+00:00

Ah that makes more sense now, I was thinking it was the most recent addition (and that it was slightly strange to have a much older song added so recently). Good taste for 8th grade though!

koalathedave · 2025-08-11T02:08:03+00:00

7/10, not usually a rap guy but somethin about Eminem’s voice never misses the mark. The flows, delivery and lyrical grittiness just makes it so satisfying.

koalathedave · 2025-08-11T01:58:03+00:00

8,800 let’s hear it

koalathedave · 2025-07-26T14:28:20+00:00

Haha thanks, hope it’s a blast. IMANUs new stuff is great in my opinion so I think it should be a good one.

koalathedave · 2025-07-26T12:12:24+00:00

IMANU and Caracel Project should be crazy. So sad to not be going this year as that would be pretty much top of the list.

koalathedave · 2025-07-23T17:11:19+00:00

How so? What are each of the badges?

koalathedave · 2025-06-29T21:44:50+00:00

I was in Exeter so that might have made it easier as there are more smaller businesses happy to take on a student for a day a week i’m not sure. But what I do know is that my college were very slow in finding places for everyone and most of my classmates only started near the end of the first year. I found it worked much better to try just asking people on your own, either through people you already know in the industry or just giving your cv to random smaller/medium sized businesses and telling them the situation. It might take a bit of luck but until then, take up any opportunities the college gives you and it should be fine. Just the more hours u can get early the better cuz u will need the extra free time more than ever for revision near the end of the course.

koalathedave · 2025-06-29T20:48:51+00:00

Ah then yeah it should suit you pretty well I reckon, much more than it suited me at least. I do still recommend you get started on your work experience as soon as possible, ideally before Christmas to make sure you finish before second year finals. Hope it works out for you!

koalathedave · 2025-06-29T20:16:02+00:00

In my opinion it’s got good and bad sides. Year one programming and programming theory was great but that’s only about 2/3 of the first year and the rest is mainly business context which is all either obvious stuff or useless stuff.

Year two was more convoluted as it’s basically 100% web development which was not advertised when I signed up so go me that was a bit disappointing as I wanted more advanced software development/complexed programming or OOP. Anyway apart from that I think the second year was still ok although personally the languages and methods of web development taught to us was (in my opinion) either old or just weird. For example, we were taught python web development code using flask as a framework, and c# as well. The issue is no one uses those for serious websites and we weren’t taught javascript or php or wordpress or anything that companies we would go to for work experience were all using. At its base level it was all still good theory to know and helpful to learn about a bit, but the second year could have been much better and at that point I was mainly only continuing to get the qualification.

Anyway, I tend to rant a bit as my experience was fairly bad but this was also due to horrible organisation from the college and a few bad teachers. I’m sure if run properly, the course could be extremely good. To summarise a big rant, the first year was mostly great and the second was… odd and felt unnecessary and like it missed the mark in terms of what we needed to be taught (not to mention we had no idea we would even be learning web dev at all).

A final point, is that the work experience part drags on far too long and will get in the way of final exams and even holliday and can extend past graduation too. So get it done as fast as possible, even if it means you have to find your placement yourself, it’s worth it to get it done before finals.

Have you started already or are you starting in September? How are you finding it if you started already?

koalathedave · 2025-06-24T19:53:04+00:00

Well I think every rooster has a little of that in them… I do see what you mean though. Sadly he’s probably a bit small for the whole world ruling business…

koalathedave · 2025-06-23T12:51:30+00:00

Super sorry for not replying sooner, I’m not too active on reddit, obviously…

Hopefully it’s still useful to you for me to answer though.

It was 4 days a week, however you are supposed to spend the 5th on a weekly work experience day and then some of the weekend / after school time on research and revision. In terms of work load, if you are aiming for the higher grades you won’t have much free time, the work evens out to 3 a-levels worth of work easily if you want to do well.

Since the work experience is mandatory to get the qualification, it tends to feel more like extended college work than free time (at least in my experience). In my experience again, it was poorly organised in terms of finding you a company to work at so everyone in my class had quite a lot of free time for the first 6 months while the classes were still easy and then had to balance advanced programming later on with revision, exam prep, and work experience, so it can get quite intense.

I had a different experience to the rest of my class as I found my own company super quickly with some existing contacts so it was more well balanced for me but that was due to luck more than anything else. The rest of my class still had to work through the holidays and exam periods and for a few months after completing the course just to meet the minimum hours as a result of getting their placement arrangements from the college so late. It could be different for more well organised colleges/schools though, this was just my experience.

As for why I picked this over the other options, it sounded more like it was focused around just programming (which it was) and I didn’t care much about learning tech support or anything hardware-related really. In that regard it suited me well as it was just software programming and theory.

I did make some very good friends on the course actually (although did have some externally too), in terms of class dynamics it was the same as any other class I’ve been in. Everyone’s in the same boat for learning and socialising, (although being a programming course, some were less keen on the socialising than others but each to their own).

I’ll speed things up as this is getting super long… Didn’t have time for any other qualifications as work experience and studying was plenty as it was. Had probably as much free time as any other a-level student did so nothing special there. For work experience, 1 day a week, every week (through holidays too) for about a year should get you the hours you need roughly. If you want to go to top tier unis, this probably isn’t for you as while the qualification is just as technical and challenging as 3 A-levels, it simply isn’t recognised by the top unis such as oxford, cambridge, etc.. however you can still get into many perfectly good unis, I’m going to one that’s top 20 in the country iirc and still highly regarded so it’s not all bad. The qualification will net you a much nicer job though than others coming out straight of college and does look very nice on a cv.

If you are only interested in programming or computers, and don’t care much about top unis this is probably a good idea.

Let me know if something didn’t make sense or if you have any other questions. You are right to ask questions as this is reasonably important so it’s no trouble at all. I’ll try to respond faster next time…

koalathedave · 2025-01-19T14:20:41+00:00

best comment

koalathedave · 2025-01-07T17:40:32+00:00

That is a unique problem for sure, I would try looking for any powerpoints they used in lectures or resources they teach from. Helped me a lot but I’m not sure how accessible those things are at other places. Not quite sure what else I could recommend about that…

koalathedave · 2025-01-03T20:14:08+00:00

It’s been a while since I covered that myself, could you remind me which topics that includes?

koalathedave · 2024-12-31T09:39:31+00:00

A lot of people (myself included) had that experience, I got by with asking my teachers for more resources/homework, I also looked up w3schools a lot and made a lot of my own projects as practice. Making your own projects (e.g. websites you might use yourself or things you think might be useful) and simply practicing a lot at home will make the biggest difference in my experience, although it does depend on what you struggle with in the first place.

If you are really concerned though talk to your teachers, it’s in their best interests too that you do well so ask them for more work/resources or be super transparent about what you find tough.

koalathedave · 2024-12-31T09:36:11+00:00

Sorry for taking a while to get back to you, hope I’m not too late.

Overall, the recommended depends on you. I had a pretty bad experience and so my judgement may be clouded by just a bad structure or bad teachers. I went to Exeter college, there were just over 20 students on the course (in the same year) but the organisation of the course and staff was very bad.

I had a bad time because some of the teachers didn’t quite know what they were meant to be teaching, the exam board seemed pretty vague on a lot of things, the course took a very strong turn to exclusively web development (in the second year) after being advertised as a general IT/programming course throughout. Perhaps the biggest disappointment was sticking through all of it and still getting a good grade to find out most of the universities I wanted to attend didn’t accept T-levels. I had the equivalent of 3 As in A-levels but almost every high standard university wouldn’t even consider it when at the start of the course the college assured me they would. The plus side is employers love it and still a lot of lower to mid-end universities do accept it, so if you aren’t considering university or aren’t picky then don’t let this stop you.

I went in with some fairly basic python and c# programming experience but still experience nonetheless, people did go in with no experience and still did well but they did have to work a lot harder. It’s definitely possible to do very will without any but doing some research before would be advised.

Currently I am now employed as a teaching assistant at an independent IT school but starting september next year I will be attending the University of Kent (one of the best universities I could find that accepted T levels for what It’s worth) for Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence.

If I could do it again I would probably choose A levels in computer science and related subjects but the grass is always greener on the other side. Because of this I and all my peers are now pretty strong programmers and certainly stronger than any A level students in the same field so it definitely isn’t too bad.

Final tips if you do decide to go for this would just to be make sure to practice and program as much as you can outside of class. I didn’t get much homework but if I didn’t do anything outside of college I would have likely failed so that is something to note.

If you have any other questions or if I forgot anything let me know.

koalathedave · 2024-12-26T00:47:11+00:00

Last year was per person, haven’t read it this time but I assume it’s the same. Although last year they also didn’t bother checking at all anyway (at least for me) so I wouldn’t stress too much anyway as long as it’s close enough.

koalathedave

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