ATPL ground studies at evenings/weekends?
 

Having completed my PPL I am now in a position to start hour building and the ATPL ground studies.

I was thinking of Bristol Ground School for its reputation and locality. However, being in a full-time job and with a poor holiday allowance it would be nearly impossible for me to take the 3 weeks necessary for classroom tuition and exams for each module (6 weeks in total).

So I was wondering if there are any ATPL distance learning schools (or even 'on site' ones) which offer the classroom tuition at evenings/weekends?

Any advice welcome. Thanks :ok:

Darksoldier,

I fear your search may be futile. The difficulty is that the ATPL theory needs to be done through a recognised training provider, and when I was looking around, I found that the general set up is two modules, each with two weeks of brush up before hand.

I went with Atlantic Flight Training as they do the course in 3 modules, and in my dealings with them they are more than happy to be flexible with the brush up dates if they can accomodate (depending on numbers). For example, if you can't make the brush up the week before the exams, then they are fine for you to go to the one the month before, or suitable combinations of both.

The rule is that 10 percent of your study time distance learning must be in the classroom, and to the best of my knowledge all of those classrooms from all of the current providers operate Monday to Fridays during normal office hours. Your only hope would be to approach training providers individually, to discuss training out of normal hours but I would expect the cost to rise considerably as you would in effect end up with one to one tuition, and that ain't gonna be cheap!

As an alternative, why not bridge your studies either side of your employers working year. ie. use 3 weeks off from one holiday year 2008 doing the exams in Sept 08 and then the next 3 weeks off from your 2009 holiday year doing exams in Mar 09?

Oh, I believe London Metropolitan also do 3 modules, but fear being a Uni they are still only Monday to Friday.

Regards,

Obs cop

I used GTS in Bournemouth. 2 Modules with 2 weeks consolidation each = 4 weeks. They also replaced much of the module 1 consolidation with 1:1 tuition on more convenient days and one week-end, but that did cost a bit extra, naturally. That wasn't possible for Module 2 as the strucure of the consolidation course did not permit it.

In total I had to take 3 weeks and 2 days off.

Cats use a 3 module system with a consolidation week at the end of each module. = 3 weeks time off + exam days.