Education Studies BA (Hons)

This programme provides opportunities to engage in many aspects of education, childhood and life-long learning. You will engage with a range of academic disciplines to discuss, debate and question educational structures, policy, practice and theory.

You deserve a positive teaching and learning experience, where you feel part of a supportive and nurturing community. That’s why most students will enjoy an innovative approach to learning using block teaching, where you will study one module at a time. You’ll benefit from regular assessments - rather than lots of exams at the end of the year - and a simple timetable that allows you to engage with your subject and enjoy other aspects of university life such as sports, societies, meeting friends and discovering your new city. By studying with the same peers and tutor for each block, you’ll build friendships and a sense of belonging.

Overview

This programme provides opportunities to engage in many aspects of education, childhood, and life-long learning. You will engage with a range of academic disciplines to discuss, debate and question educational structures, policy, practice and theory.

Our Education Studies programme enhances personal development and depth of thought. We believe in creative and collaborative approaches to evidence-based teaching and learning. The programme will empower students to see their own career path in education environments as individual, ongoing, multi-faceted and with many routes. With social justice and inclusion at its heart, alongside work-based learning opportunities, the programme inspires its staff and students to engage with local, national, and global issues. The programme aspires to achieve sector recognition for its innovative research, engaging content and modes of delivery which are transformative for its staff, students, and the wider community.

Our students explore how people develop through education and, by taking part in placement and volunteering opportunities from the first year of study and throughout their degree programme, gain a broad range of skills that are transferable to careers in socially-orientated professions.

You will cover modules including Perspectives of Education, Childhood, Social Justice and Education, Ways of Learning and Wellbeing, and Special Educational Needs, Disability and Neurodiversity. The programme will also help you to develop transferable skills and your professional agency through placement opportunities.

Recent graduates have gone on to work in teaching, education practice, early years childcare, youth work, educational publishing, the creative industries or choose to progress to postgraduate level courses, such as our Education Practice MA.

Key features

You will benefit from Education 2030 - DMU’s new way of delivering courses, focusing on ensuring the best possible experience for our students. Through block teaching, you will focus on one subject at a time instead of several at once. This means that you will be able to focus closely on each subject and absorb your learning material in more depth, whilst working more closely with your tutors and course mates.
Engage with the local community and boost your CV through placements and volunteering opportunities in learning environments such as schools, art and learning centres or museums.
Successful completion of the course provides a foundation to progress onto Initial Teacher Training, enabling you to become a teacher in the UK.
Select a route through this degree in English Literature, Creative Writing, History or Drama. These carefully chosen routes will complement and enrich your understanding of your main subject, alongside broadening your skillset to give you a wider range of career paths upon graduation.
Our students have gained international experience related to their studies through our DMU Global programme. Education Studies students have previously explored museum education in Amsterdam, considered inequality and segregation in New York, and supported refugees in Berlin.

Benefit from block teaching, where most students study one subject at a time. A simple timetable will allow you to really engage with your learning, receive regular feedback and assessments, get to know your course mates and enjoy a better study-life balance.

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UK
EU/International

Institution code: D26

UCAS course code: X300 (Part-time entry: apply direct to DMU)

Start date: September

Duration: Three years full-time, or six years part-time

Location: De Montfort University Leicester UK

Fees and funding:

2025/26 tuition fees for UK students: £9,250

Additional costs: You may incur additional costs for this programme, including the cost of travelling to and from project/placement locations.

How to apply

Order a prospectus

Book an Open Day

Submit a study-related enquiry

Institution code: D26

UCAS course code: X300

Start date: September

Duration: Three years full-time or six years part-time

Location: De Montfort University Leicester UK

Fees and funding:

2024/25 tuition fees for international students: £15,750

Find out more about available funding for international students.

Additional costs: You may incur additional costs for this programme, including the cost of travelling to and from project/placement locations.

How to apply

Order a prospectus

Submit a study-related enquiry

Entry criteria

GCSEs

Five GCSEs at grade C/4 or above including: English and Maths

Plus one of the following:

A Level

A minimum of 104 UCAS points from 2 or more A levels

T Levels

Merit

BTEC

BTEC National Diploma — Distinction/Merit/Merit or
BTEC Extended Diploma — Distinction/Merit/Merit

Alternative qualifications include:

Access to HE Diploma

Pass in QAA accredited Access to HE overall 104 UCAS tariff with at least 30 Level 3 credits at Merit.

We will normally require students to have had a break from full-time education before undertaking the Access course

International Baccalaureate: 24+ points

English language requirements

If English is not your first language an IELTS score of 6.5 overall is essential.

English language tuition, delivered by our British Council-accredited Centre for English Language Learning, is available both before and throughout the course if you need it.

Interview: No

Work experience: No

This course is for students who intend to build a career working with young children. While this is most likely to mean employment in primary schools, it can also include nursery and other pre-school and after-school settings.

Personal statement selection criteria
Clear communication skills, including good grammar and spelling
Information relevant to the course applied for
Interest in the course demonstrated with explanation and evidence
If relevant for the course — work and life experience

DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check: Yes

You submit an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service disclosure application form before starting the course (if you are overseas you will also need to submit a criminal records certificate from your home country), which needs to be cleared in accordance with DMU’s admissions policy. Contact us for up-to-date information.

We strongly advise that you opt for the DBS update service as it is possible that future placement providers may request a recent DBS and not one from the start of the programme. If you decide not to opt for this service then you will have to pay for the DBS again if requested by your placement provided – the university will not cover this cost.

UCAS Tariff changes

Students applying for courses starting in September will be made offers based on the latest UCAS Tariff.

Structure and assessment

First Year

Block 1: An Introduction to Education: History and Academic Discipline

Block 2: Perspectives of Education

Block 3: Childhood, Social Justice and Education OR you can select to study one route from the list below:

Creative Writing route: Writers Salon
Drama route: Shifting Stages
English Literature route: Introduction to Drama - Shakespeare
History route: Global Cities

Block 4: Inclusion and Diversity

Second Year

Block 1: Select one of:

Contemporary Issues in Education and Pedagogy: A problem-based learning approach
Preparing for Professional Practice

Block 2: Research Methods in Education

Block 3 Select one of:

Understanding Learning and Wellbeing
Cultural and Technological Transformations and Music in the Life of the Primary School

OR continue with the route selected in the first year:

Creative Writing route: Story Craft
Drama route: Theatre Revolutions
English Literature route: Text Technologies
History route: Humans and the Natural World

Block 4: SEND and Neurodiversity

Third Year

Block 1 Select one of:

Creativity in Education
Radical Education
Global and Comparative Education

Block 2 Select one of:

The Practice and Policies of Primary Education
Adult Learners and Lifelong Learning
Education and Equality: Class, Race and Ethnicity

Block 3 Select one of:

Collaborative Curriculum Design
Gender and Education
Reflection on Practice: Teaching and Learning (placement module)

OR continue with the route selected in the first year:

Creative Writing route: Uncreative Writing, Creative Misbehaviour
Drama route: Performance, Identity and Activism
English Literature route: World Englishes: On the Page and Beyond
History route: The World on Display

Block 4: Dissertation

Routes: You can select to study a route in Block 3 during your first year. When selecting a module for Block 3 in your second year you can opt to remain on your chosen route or return to Education Studies. If you choose to remain with the route, it must be continued in your third year.

See detailed module information

Note: All modules are indicative and based on the current academic session. Course information is correct at the time of publication and is subject to review. Exact modules may, therefore, vary for your intake in order to keep content current. If there are changes to your course we will, where reasonable, take steps to inform you as appropriate.

This is a full-time course. Each module is worth 30 credits. In your first year you will normally attend around 9 hours of timetabled taught sessions (workshops and seminars) each week, and we expect you to undertake at least 30 further hours of independent study each week to complete preparation tasks, assessments and research.

Assessment may include, but is not limited to:

Presentations
Micro-teaching sessions
Contributions to electronic discussion boards
Creating wikis and lesson planning
Blogs
Essays
Negotiated assignment
Research project
Portfolio
Co-production activities

Academic expertise

Education Studies staff have professional experience across all stages of learning and education from primary schooling through to adult learning, nationally and internationally.

Staff are members of a number of professional associations including the British Education Research Association and British Sociological Association, and are affiliated with research groups including the Centre for Critical Education Policy Studies at the Institute of Education; the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London, DMU Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development and DMU Institute of Research in Criminology, Community, Education and Social Justice.

The teaching team includes professors, associate professors, doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. The team have a number of notable awards and accolades including the Vice Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award and Director of the Institute for Research in Criminology, Education and Social Justice.

Staff are currently engaged in leading, internally and externally funded research projects relating to their areas of expertise, including:

A Germ’s Journey: co-creation of resources for addressing UN Sustainable Development Goals in education & health in low-and-middle-income countries. This participatory research project evaluates whether specifically developed resources (‘A Germ’s Journey’) aid children in India’s understanding of hand-hygiene principles and discusses how the findings can inform the future development of culturally relevant resources for developing countries.
Awarding of an Advance HE Good Practice Grant to re-develop our SEND module through co-production with students and practitioners who are disabled, neurodivergent and/or have special educational needs.
Race, education and decolonisjng the curriculum
Gender and education
SEND
Creativity and education
Sustainability, the environment and wellbeing
Technology and education
Alternative education
Social justice, childhood, youth and education
Gypsy/Traveller education
Music education and vocal pedagogy
Global comparative education
Educational transitions and transferable learning

Facilities and features

Hawthorn Building

Substantial investment in Health and Life Sciences has developed our teaching and learning facilities to help you develop your practical experience and theoretical knowledge beyond the classroom.

The 19th century Hawthorn Building has facilities designed to replicate current practice in health and life sciences, including contemporary analytical chemistry and formulation laboratories, audiology booths and nursing and midwifery clinical skills suites.

Meanwhile, the Edith Murphy building provides a dedicated learning space, featuring classrooms, a lecture theatre, computer labs and meeting rooms.

Library and learning zones

On campus, the main Kimberlin Library offers a space where you can work, study and access a vast range of print materials, with computer stations, laptops, plasma screens and assistive technology also available.

As well as providing a physical space in which to work, we offer online tools to support your studies, and our extensive online collection of resources accessible from our Library website, e-books, specialised databases and electronic journals and films which can be remotely accessed from anywhere you choose.

We will support you to confidently use a huge range of learning technologies, including the Virtual Learning Environment, Collaborate Ultra, DMU Replay, MS Teams, Turnitin and more. Alongside this, you can access LinkedIn Learning and learn how to use Microsoft 365, and study support software such as mind mapping and note-taking through our new Digital Student Skills Hub.

The library staff offer additional support to students, including help with academic writing, research strategies, literature searching, reference management and assistive technology. There is also a ‘Just Ask’ service for help and advice, live LibChat, online workshops, tutorials and drop-ins available from our Learning Services, and weekly library live chat sessions that give you the chance to ask the library teams for help.

More flexible way to learn

We offer an equitable and inclusive approach to learning and teaching for all our students. Known as the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), our teaching approach has been recognised as sector leading. UDL means we offer a wide variety of support, facilities and technology to all students, including those with disabilities and specific learning differences.

Just one of the ways we do this is by using ‘DMU Replay’ – a technology providing all students with anytime access to audio and/or visual material of lectures. This means students can revise taught material in a way that suits them best, whether it's replaying a recording of a class or adapting written material shared in class using specialist software.

Opportunities and careers

Placements

A key element of Education Studies programmes is for students to gain placement and work-based learning experience. This provides students with a deeper hands-on understanding of educational settings and opportunities to develop their professional identity as well as relate theory with real-life practice.

Graduate Careers

This course helps develop skills that are particularly useful for students who want to build a career working with young children. While this can open up opportunities for employment in primary schools, it can also include nurseries as well as other pre and after-school settings.

Many of our recent graduates have started their careers in teaching, education practice, nurseries, youth work, educational publishing and the creative industries. Graduates can also build on their knowledge with postgraduate opportunities, including an Education Practice MA, which opens up opportunities to work in a number of wider educational environments, including youth and community work, local authority employment, social and educational research, museum and gallery education and early years settings.

DMU Global

This is our innovative international experience programme which aims to enrich your studies and expand your cultural horizons – helping you to become a global graduate, equipped to meet the needs of employers across the world. Through DMU Global, we offer a wide range of opportunities including on-campus and UK activities, overseas study, internships, faculty-led field trips and volunteering, as well as Erasmus+ and international exchanges.

Students on this course have previously undertaken trips to summer schools in Turkey, Japan and South Korea, which offered them the opportunity to learn alongside students from around the world, as well as study unique modules and explore the cities of Istanbul, Fukuoka and Seoul. Other trips have given students the opportunity to teach English to schoolchildren in Taiwan, consider inequality and segregation in New York, and support refugees in Berlin.

Take your next steps

Nine halls of residence and around 2,300 rooms, all of which are within easy walking distance of the campus.

Run by students for students, DSU offers more than 150 societies and almost 40 different sports clubs for you to get involved in.

Education Studies BA (Hons)

Block teaching designed around you

Overview

More courses like this

Find your new home at DMU

Entry criteria

Structure and assessment

Course modules

Teaching and assessments

Academic expertise