BSY Courses

BSY has been around for quite a while now. They are one of the biggest distance learning colleges around, specialising in alternative health and complementary therapies.

Thousands of people just like you and me choose BSY to help them achieve their lifelong goals. Some people even use their qualifications to start their own business. Even companies use BSY to train their employees. But there are also people who have never heard of ...
...How I came to find BSY ***

I have been out of work for just over a year now. Actually I was never really in work. I finished my A-Levels in 2003 and then moved to Swindon to be with my fiancé (a lot of people may know that story by now!). After nearly a month I found a job with Swindon Borough Council. It was part time and only eight hours a week but due to a huge amount of stress from a number of sources I couldn’t cope with ... more

BSY has been around for quite a while now. They are one of the biggest distance learning colleges around, specialising in alternative health and complementary therapies.

Thousands of people just like you and me choose BSY to help them achieve their lifelong goals. Some people even use their qualifications to start their own business. Even companies use BSY to train their employees. But there are also people who have never heard of BSY and shamefully I have to admit I was one of those people.

*** How I came to find BSY ***

I have been out of work for just over a year now. Actually I was never really in work. I finished my A-Levels in 2003 and then moved to Swindon to be with my fiancé (a lot of people may know that story by now!). After nearly a month I found a job with Swindon Borough Council. It was part time and only eight hours a week but due to a huge amount of stress from a number of sources I couldn’t cope with the job anymore. It wasn’t anything to do with the company or the people in it. The job was easy enough too. It was my communication skills that took a battering. I couldn’t talk to people and I couldn’t answer the phones so I felt it would be better for the company if I left and also it was vital to me so that I could try and get my life back on track.

I decided to take a year out but I didn’t leave the council on good terms. In fact I lied to them and told them my parents were ill. I’d have said anything to keep the truth away from people because I was ashamed of it. I did apply for other companies because my financial situation was getting quite bad and I really wanted to get back to work. But after months of not being in work and only having a reference from the council (and not a good one at that), I just kept getting turned down. This made me feel lost and like I wasn’t going anywhere in life. I basically sat around for a year writing on ciao, entering competitions and generally wasting my life away. Until now.

Around a month ago I decided to gain myself some extra qualifications. Something I’ve wanted to do for around six years now is counselling. I have always loved helping other people and listening to their problems and offering them advice. I used to volunteer for an online counselling site and I loved the satisfaction of people writing to me thanking me for helping them. It’s the best feeling in the world. So I typed in ‘counselling courses uk’ into google and BSY came up.

I ordered a free prospectus from their website and it was with me within a week.

*** The Prospectus ***

I have to say I was extremely impressed by their prospectus! It came with a price list of all the courses that they do, information on the courses, and a £20 discount voucher off your course. I found the information particularly useful. It tells you what you will study within the course and how much percentage of marks you will need to pass the course.

*** The Courses ***
They have a wide selection of courses available. In fact there are over 250 to choose from! There are eleven categories that the courses come under. These are:

1) Yoga
2) Complementary therapies
3) Health care
4) Counselling and stress management
5) Animal Healing
6) Self Improvement
7) Sports and Fitness
8) Beauty Therapy
9) Mind, Body and Spirit
10) Management studies
11) General Interest

I was quite surprised to see the sports and fitness section and the management studies because I would never have associated them with complementary therapies etc. Obviously I can’t list all the courses because this review would be far too long and you can easily order a prospectus if you like the sound of any of the categories.

*** The Prices ***

If I’m honest, the price was a major factor in my decision to apply. I had previously researched ICS courses and courses from the Open University. Now maybe the Open University would have been better but it was just too pricey for me. The fact that you had to apply to them first with all your details etc and enrol on a course before you could find out if you were entitled to financial help really put me off. This meant that if I wasn’t entitled to a lot of the course fee, I would have to fork out the extra couple of hundred at least and I simply could not afford to do that.

ICS and BSY however both offer a monthly payment plan. Now that sounded more affordable to me. Before I found out about BSY I’d looked at the ICS monthly payment plan and it was fairly reasonable, but when I saw that BSY’s prices were lower I completely changed my mind and went with them.

For my course it’s £295 altogether. My payments are £25 a month for 9 months. When I first started the course I got £20 off my deposit. It would have been £70 but with the discount it came up to £50. That’s another thing I’ve found; BSY give out quite a few discounts.

*** Discounts? ***

Yes that’s right; discounts! As I said they gave me £20 off my course. Other companies do this too such as ICS, but BSY also send you more discounts while you are doing a course. For example, I got a letter from them and an offer of two courses for the price of one. Now if I’d have had the money, I’d have taken full advantage of that! I could have saved £300, which to me is a lot of money. Now you may think why would you need to do two courses? Well if you look at their prospectus you’ll see that they do a lot of courses that would probably interest you. I know I want to do at least another five from there!
*** What do I get for completing a course? ***

It all depends on which course you take but all courses come with a certificate. These can be:

1) A Certificate of Competence. This is to show that you have completed your course and have followed it successfully and gained new skills.

2) A Certificate of Merit. This is professional training in either a foundation or an extra course, which gives additional skills to professional level required to gain a diploma.

3) A Diploma. This is career training up to practitioner level giving you the right to use designatory letters after your name.

The course I am doing is a diploma course. I think I get all three qualifications because I do a two-day training course and I’ll be gaining new skills. If anybody knows any different please let me know :)

*** You mentioned a two-day training course? ***

I did indeed. The two-day training course is an option available with some of the courses. This is so you gain valuable experience in the career you want to pursue. Obviously when you go to college and do a course, if it is something practical like counselling, you’ll need to have some experience. This is what the two-day training is replacing.

The training takes place either in Bath, London or Devon. When you enrol on a course and pay your deposit you will get information on the two-day training and how much it costs etc. Mine will be in Devon but I am hoping to do it next year and my fiancé and me are going to make a little holiday out of it while we’re down there :)

It does cost extra for the training though. It’s £70 per day and the hours are 9:30am until 4:30pm so an all day affair. You are provided with coffee and biscuits during the breaks and a light lunch is also served at 1:00pm. All refreshments are included in the price.

*** What if I get stuck while doing the course? ***

You are provided with a tutor and when you get your first lessons and information after enrolling, you will have their direct phone number. I did find it disappointing that I didn’t have an e-mail address for them because that would have been so much easier as we can’t ring out on our phone at the moment.

So far I haven’t needed help so I can’t comment on how helpful they actually are. They do have student quotes on their website though so you may want to check them out at some point. I can say when I had a problem with my course I e-mailed them (the main BSY e-mail), and they phoned me up a couple of days later instead of just e-mailing back. I found the woman very friendly and was surprised that she was actually American. I have no idea if they are based in America but they are a UK company.

*** You’ve twisted my arm; I’ve found a course I like. Now how do I apply? ***

You can enrol in three different ways; phone, Internet and post. I personally enrolled

1) On the phone: There is a phone number provided on the website and also with the prospectus if you have one. It’s free phone and when I do another course I’ll be enrolling through this method because then you know you’re course is on its way.

2) The Internet: This is the method I used. I found my course, it had a £20 discount still and it was easy to apply. I filled in my fiancés bank details and then I had to wait for the order to be processed. I hadn’t received any e-mail confirmation or any feedback from them for around a week so that’ when I e-mailed them and they rang me a couple of days later saying they had enrolled me.

I found this method frustrating because of not hearing anything back and not knowing whether I was getting my course or not.

3) Through the Post: With the prospectus you are provided with a freepost envelope and a £20 discount voucher to attach to your order form. It’s only a little form and you just basically select how you are going to pay for your course etc. I didn’t use this because I was worried about having my fiancés bank details in an envelope, which anybody could open (I don’t trust the royal mail!).

*** Is there anything I need to do after I’ve received my course? ***

Because I ordered on the Internet, I did need to fill out a form for my monthly payments. This again sparked my issues about sending off my fiancés bank details through the post. Again it was a freepost envelope but I cello taped it just so nobody would open it.

Apart from that though you just do lesson one. I got lesson’s one and two and a question paper for lesson one with my first parcel. When I send back the answers I will get lesson three and a question paper for lesson two and so on.

*** My overall Opinion ***

I’ve been studying with BSY for just over two weeks now and I absolutely love it. I find the course detail extremely good and I have had no problems whatsoever yet but I guess it’s still early days.

I am finding it quite easy too. Everything I need to know I find out through the Internet if I can’t find the answers in the lesson one booklet. I have to say there is a lot of information in the booklets but to get higher grades it’s always better to research as much as you can.

I wouldn’t recommend doing a home learning course with BSY if you don’t have any motivation though. A lot of people warned me off home learning because it is so tempting to not do any work and the course never gets done. However, because I want it so much I’m finding that gives me the motivation. I do have days when I don’t want to do it but my fiancé always gives me the support I need.

As I mentioned with the ways to enrol, you do not get confirmation through e-mail once you have enrolled online. After reading the website again it does say they need to process your enrolment first (they can decline enrolment if they want to), before your course is sent out to you. I found this did take around a week and a half to get to me but I was really impatient.

I personally prefer BSY to ICS because it’s tailored to my needs. ICS didn’t have as many counselling courses as BSY did and it didn’t offer me a diploma. This obviously isn’t a company you should enrol with if you’re after something like IT or GCSE’s. You’ll see from the list of categories I gave you if anything would suit you or not. They do, do some good self-improvement courses including assertiveness skills and confidence things. I am going to take some of those up at one point. The skills would also look excellent on your CV.

I am going to be finding out if you can pay off more than £25 a month if you have the money. This is because I find 9 months to pay off the course is a long time and I will have finished it long before then hopefully and I will be starting the follow on, more advanced and more expensive diploma course. So once I find out I’ll update this review and let you know.

I’ll also add information on how the tutors grade my work and I’ll write a separate review on the actual course I am doing.

*** What course are you doing? ***

I’m doing the ‘Professional Stress Consultant’ course. Then once completed I’ll be doing the ‘Advanced Stress Consultant’ course. So if you ever have a lot of stress in your life you’ll know who to come to lol.

I hope this review has helped you!

Aimee xxx
 

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