Warning National Marine Correspondents School

[Napoleon]

Any reader considering taking a course at the National Marine Correspondents School should heed this warning.

I started to take the Ocean Navigation Course with them (At a cost of 950 odd quid) and was very displeased with both the materials and the service. Let me explain:
I received two boxes containing a selection of identical looking booklets, all of which were very bad black and white photocopies. You know the kind done on a really old copier with the darkness turned right up so can’t really see any contrasts in pictures. In fact some of the illustrations were so bad it was kind of difficult to see what it’s supposed to be a picture of. There were no photographs and certainly nothing was in colour.
Anyway at this point I really should have sent them back but as I currently live in Tokyo and I really wanted to master navigation I tried to start the course. That was when I encountered the second problem. The materials are extremely poorly written, I imagine that the person who wrote them understood what he was talking about but didn’t have the ability to pass it on in a concise and understandable way. Being a teacher for 15 years myself perhaps makes it easier for me to spot really poorly written and edited materials and believe me people these are up there with some of the worst I’ve seen.
Anyway I thought as I’d only been sent half of the materials I could be refunded for half of the course. I hadn’t even contacted a tutor or had any contact at all with the school as I couldn’t even finish the first assignments, so poor was the quality of the media and presentation.
I sent an E-mail to the school very reasonably requesting a refund of half of the fee plus the fee for the RYA exams which naturally I hadn’t taken.
The schools reply is shown below:
Mr Mannering

If you would like a replacement copy of our terms and conditions we will be happy to send you one.

Regards

Rob Stott
National Marine Correspondence School
30 Woodside Business Park
Birkenhead+44 (0)151-647 6777

In closing I strongly recommend that anyone considering this school think again, and if you absolutely must at least ask for inspection copies of the first few booklets so that you can see just how bad they are.
Napoleon Mannering

 

[jfkal]

Ouch!

 

[Barnacle]

I used this school 2 or 3 years ago to do my Yachtmaster Shorebased. I found the course material very comprehensive and good quality, the marking very prompt , and they were very understanding when I took longer than usual to complete the course and do the exam.
Ask for some sample course material before you pay?

 

[bedouin]

I did my yachtmaster theory through these guys a couple of years ago and found the service excellent.

The material they produce is very comprehensive. It does look dated by modern standards (all black and white, line drawings) but the contents are excellent.

They provide much more information than is required for the RYA syllabus, and present it in such a way that you are expected to think about the subject rather than just regurgitate standard answers and to get the most out of it you have to spend the time to go through all the self assessment, and tutor marked questions.