The courses are designed to accomodate "the best of both worlds" so to speak. Before, it was " do i get my degree or go straight into training?" I know what most people would choose, i'd be the same. But now its designed to allow you to get a degree whilst completing your training.
The tuition fees (£3,225 per year), covers all ground tuition towards PPL and ATPL aswell as the degree, this is what you would pay on a normal degree course for the degree alone. Therefore, saving you the cost of paying for groundschool (£2000+) seperately.
There would be no way that all flying could be included! Imagine, you are paying £10,000 tuition over 3 years. For that, you get groundschool completed and a degree. If they were then to include £40,000+ worth of flying within that price? On a course of 20 people, they would make over an £800,000 loss. Like virtually any company/institution out there, they may want to help us get the best of what we want to achieve, but they are there primarily to make a profit.
I think the aviation operations plan sounds a good idea if it is what you think is best for yourself. I'd maybe still consider resitting the GCSE. You could have a degree in maths, but if in the future, a company requires a C or above in GCSE maths, then you could still be stuck. Its a stupid thing I kno, but at the end of the day, if theres 100's of people for the same job, it could come down to little details like that.
I wouldn't wait until you have finished the course to contact anyone. Start planning well ahead. Think, do you want to do a uni course, or would you rather skip the degree and do the training? If you would, then would you want to choose an Integrated or modular route? There are plenty of threads to help out with decisions like this. Depending what you choose, maybe try and get some flying done towards your PPL and get the PPL ground exams out of the way. Personally, I'd say contact 3 reputable training schools 6months to 1 year before you want to start training. Again people think differently about which schools are reputable, so get lots of opinions. Arrange to go and visit them, speak to the students and staff, find out if it seems to be what its claimed to be, and just as important, make sure it is somewhere you think you would be happy to train.
Hope this helps,
C89