# Portobello Institute



## Milly (18 Sep 2010)

Has anyone done a course with Portobello? I am interested in Speech and Language Therapy Assistant course and was wondering (a) if a qualification from this institute is widely recognised (I think it would be FETAC Level 5), (b) if there are employment prospects with such a qualification and (c) if they are a good company to deal with?


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## johnno09 (2 Oct 2010)

FETAC Level 5 is recognised, as for a fetac level 5 in community and health or whichever one is given on this course Ive never seen a job advertised for a an assistant speech and language therapist and dont know what else you could do with this? Special needs assistant in a special needs school maybe?? Similarly with their physiotherapy assistant course, great idea but what do you do with it when there arent jobs for physios? 
If you have ample money and fancy doing it out of interest then id say fine, and ive never heard any bad press about this college, they seem to developing themselves bigtime in recent years, its just a case of market driven courses??


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## gipimann (2 Oct 2010)

Is this the place in Dominic St, Dublin?

I did a Reflexology course with them in 2003, accredited by 2 UK bodies which was the only good part of the course.  My classmates and I found the institute to be most unhelpful during the course, from their demand for additional fees on day 1 (having paid €2000, they wanted €200 up front for photocopying and materials), right up to exam time when we weren't told of a change to the format of the exam paper until we saw it on the day!  There was no after-course support as promised either.

Friend of mine did an Interior Design course with them around the same time, and found that their accreditation from the UK wasn't approved - the UK institute wasn't happy with the results from the course or the internal marking system, so refused to credit the students....who only found this out after their exams.

My experience goes back to 2003, I would hope that they've improved standards since then.


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## BetsyClark (4 Oct 2010)

FETAC Level 5 is a recognised qualification, however a single module on its own is unlikely to be particularly useful, unless it's part of (a component) a major award. 

I did a FETAC Level Special Needs Education certificate with Portobello in Sept 2008. The evening classes were held at a local hotel. Out of a 3 hour class the teacher read notes to us for about 2 hours.There were the odd class discussions, sometimes one of us would read, and there was a 20 min tea break. All in all, although I got the certificate, it was over priced at €995, the teacher didn't "teach" or show any particular passion for the subject. The notes which we downloaded and printed our selves were full of typos and inconsistencies. She delivered the course according to the guidelines laid down, but it was boring for me. I wasn't impressed overall.


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## Milly (4 Oct 2010)

Thanks for feedback people. They are not going ahead with the course in Cork this year, so I will just wait and see how the Dublin one pans out.(I'm not in a position to go to Dublin). Your comments would certainly make me proceed with caution


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