BPTC students face rising fees

Readers' comments (6)

• Anonymous | 6-Mar-2013 6:34 pm

  Kaplan is certainly not one of the three biggest providers of the BPTC. City is much larger!

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• Anonymous | 7-Mar-2013 1:35 pm

  Just this week Lord Neuberger said he was embarrassed about the lack of social/gender diversity at the Supreme Court. It all starts here. When young people are being charged nearly £20k to be trained for a career that they have a minute chance of succeeding in then it will be the wealthiest who can afford to try it out, those with financial support from their parents, who actually opt for the bar - who else can afford it?
  I would suggest that this is a racket and something that the competition authorities should be looking at. How can they justify such rises? It would be interesting to hear from a student about what they get for that money. In some areas of the country it would go someway to buying a house.

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• Anonymous | 7-Mar-2013 2:42 pm

  The article is correct. "The three biggest private providers..." Kaplan/ BPP/ College are the private providers in London. City is a public body.

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• Anonymous | 7-Mar-2013 3:29 pm

  It was my experience of the BPTC that it is a sausage machine with nothing approaching the pastoral care and academic support I obtained on my undergraduate non-law degree. If I had my choice again I would choose Northumbria for its academic excellence and consistently high pass rate. A matter of record.

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• Anonymous | 9-Mar-2013 12:12 pm

  The BSB should intervene on this money-making scandal: it is nothing short of robbery, and the course providers should be held to account. The number of BPTC places offered should be halved, or better still the BPTC itself should be disbanded completely: let the Inns of Court have the duty of giving students advocacy training and all other training to be taught during the pupillage year.
  
  The course providers need regulating. The way in which internal complaints are handled is such that the course providers shut down any recourse for complaints from students, because the management believe that as ex-lawyers they can stifle any complaint. For example, recently a course provider lost a number of students' final exam scripts: the students were informed that they would need to re-sit the exams; the students complained, insisting that the provider compensate them; the provider then informed the students that, at best, the provider would allow them to re-sit for "free". It was not until the students threatened group litigation action that the provider offered them compensation. Moreover, one should remember the debacle some years back when a course provider oversubscribed on the BVC, and at the insistence of the BSB asked some of its intended students to defer for a year. The course providers still continue to oversubscribe and ask students to defer.
  
  I haven't even mentioned that providers take on students who will never get a pupillage, or students who may never even pass the course. Nor have I commented on the poor quality of the "taught options", or the fact that part-time students are considered to be "second-rate students" when compared with their full time colleagues.

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• Dan | 11-Mar-2013 9:00 am

  Funny enough this subject did not attract as much attention as the hike in aptitude test fees.

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