A student from K College’s Dover campus who promised her dying grandmother that she would get back into education has won a series of top awards at the Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh.

Victoria Wallbank, who is now 25 and currently lives in South Lanarkshire, grew up in Folkestone and went to Folkestone School for Girls. She says: ‘I did my GCSEs and started my AS Levels but I failed. I got 3 U grades and left school. I just wasn’t interested. I was a rebellious teenager. I even did my resits and failed them too.’

Victoria then worked with the elderly in a number of residential homes for a while before leaving to care for her grandmother who was dying of bowel cancer. She says: ‘I was doing that for about 6 months and I realised I needed to pull my finger out and get back into education. That was the thing that I promised her, that I would go back.’

After checking her options, Victoria chose an Access to Higher Education course at K College’s Dover campus. ‘I was 19 when I went into College, and for the first couple of months,I did struggle but I got help at the library which gave me extra support because I was really struggling with time management. I really liked the course because it wasn’t taught like it was at school; it was really involved learning, I did two main subjects, English Literature and Environmental Studies and the lecturer in it was very practical; we did site visits and everything made sense for me at last.’

She then chose Construction for her university degree because her family had a small property developing business. She applied for a number of universities and Heriot Watt was the only one to offer her a place because it was open to taking people from diverse backgrounds.

Victoria adds: ‘I enjoyed Construction and found it interesting and always appreciated buildings and architecture. But I fell pregnant during my college course and although I got offered a university place, I deferred for a year and then moved the year my son was born. I had a lot of family support and my mum moved to Scotland with me, but it was a big and stressful experience. At university, I had a mentor, and she was absolutely brilliant, and went beyond the call of duty to help me.’

Victoria is now starting her post graduate studies, having won a bursary to cover her tuition fees.

As well as graduating with a First Class degree, she finished top of her class and won 5 awards: the Watt Club medal, the highest that is awarded at the Heriot Watt University, the CIOB certificate of excellence, the CIOB project management award, the CIOB Scotland graduate award, and the Scottish Builders Edinburgh and District Charitable Trust Fund award.

Victoria has complete a 6 week work placement with Turner and Townsend, a major construction consultancy company in their Glasgow branch, and has been offered further work placements.

When she has completed her studies, Victoria hopes to work in the construction industry: ‘I would love to see my former teachers in Kent, they all said to me, “you can do better”, but I just said “whatever”! I think having my little boy has made me knuckle down, I’m not doing this just for me, it’s for him.’

Victoria’s son, Stevie, is now 4 and has just started Primary School.