Hello,
I had quite a few issues with Inspire Education. A year and a half ago I enrolled to study Aged Care Certificate III. It was marketed as a course one could study while working. At the start of the course, I received a parcel with a 'Skills Logbook' that I was instructed to complete during my work placement, which was to be organised by the student.

About six months in, I received some emails saying that they were moving from their old learning portal to The Hub.

Due to a busy schedule I started to complete me coursework in late 2016, noticing that new units (Upgrade Subjects) had been added, and changes were made to some of the workbooks that I had already worked on.

At the end of the year I paid for a six month extension. I had completed most of the workbooks but not submitted because I had not filmed any of the video assignments (they required other people to act and props, such a Sudan/van, which I had no access to).

I then started looking for a placement. No one from Inspire informed me of how difficult it is for a student to organise a placement. Most facilities I contacted were confused as to why Inspire was not contacting them and refused to deal directly with students, even my High School Careers Advisor and she said it was ridiculous for an Education Provider to expect students to organise placement.

After many emails exchanged with an Inspire Employee, I convinced her to help me by sending me a generic recommendation that I could distribute. (I emailed every aged care organisation that I could travel to, even outside of Sydney, which are over 300 locations, and got about 4 'possibilities'). Luckily St Joan of Arc Villa offered me a position. So I organised the paperwork, took three weeks off work and I completed my 120 hours with very positive feedback and references from multiple staff members. No one from Inspire ever checked up on how the placement was going.

When I was submitting the original Skills Workbook, I found the message that it had also upgraded and that if A student had already completed a placement, they may have to do another to fill in the gap.

I searched through my old emails from Inspire, nothing informed me of this change. I emailed the employee I had been in contact with and sent a message on the Hub.
For the next few weeks I exchanged emails, Hub messages and attempted phone calls.
It seems their so-called student support is the ability to make an appointment to talk to a different employee each time, in a two hour period (working hours). In my experience they did not call in that period, did not call back with information (that they were unsure of and had to check up on), and were generally unhelpful.

So this has gone on for about a month and now my course time has run out. I am going oversees very soon, I do not expect any further assistance will come from Inspire.
Talking to others who worked in aged care also made me realise how expensive it is to study with Inspire.
I realise that the course upgrade was mandatory, but for such a big change, after each student pays at least $1000 to study with Inspire, they should send more than an email (which when I told them I didn't receive was instructed to check my junk mail, a year later) or possibly call up their students once in a year.

This is the first time I've written a complaint about any product/ service I've paid for. I have lost about $4000 studying with Inspire ( $1500 cost of the course and about $2400 of working hours I missed) due to lack of support and effective communication. It's really disappointing to end up with no certificate, refund, or any offer of compensation from Inspire for this unethical behaviour. I’m sure many student have had positive experiences with Inspire, but for what they charge, there is a serious lack of student support and I would urge anyone considering studying with Inspire to shop around.
Regards.