The National Extension College offers a comprehensive range of GCSEs, IGCSEs and A levels, as well as a number of vocational and business courses.

[3] Subjects covered at GCSE and IGCSE level include the sciences, English literature and language, foundation and higher maths, French and business studies.

The college made effective use of local television to increase public awareness of its existence and received more than 3,000 enquiries from potential students in its first eight weeks.

However, the departure of Freeman in January 1987 saw the NEC reaffirm its commitment to being a college in its own right and a major investment in new courses brought with it a significant increase in enrollments.

The new A level curriculum, introduced in 2000, was another extremely busy time for the organisation, with its editorial team producing more than 16,000 pages of materials to accommodate the change.

At the same time it continued to produce materials for other educational institutions, maintaining a portfolio of more than 200 learning resources for colleges, trainers and employers.

[16] It did not take long for the NEC to find a new partner with which to progress its educational work, and in December 2011 the college joined forces with the Open School Trust.

[17] Ros Morpeth, chief executive of the National Extension College (NEC), was named TES FE Leader of the Year for her "tenacity and inspirational leadership".

"[citation needed] On 25 April 2019, BBC 4 broadcast an hour long documentary Happy Birthday OU: 50 Years of The Open University, later reviewed by Lucy Mangan for the Guardian online.

[20] Dr Ros Morpeth OBE was part of the Steering Group which advised on the development of the "Learning at Life Transitions" report published in July 2019.

Announced in November 2019 at a launch in the Grammar School at Leeds,[22] the course garnered media attention and coverage as a way of studying this once endangered subject through distance learning.

[26] Though primarily an online distance learning college, many of NEC's courses have been adapted into print formats in order for them to be delivered effectively in a prison setting.