Why study this course?

Prepare yourself for a career in primary teaching and childcare with London Met’s accelerated Primary Education degree. This two-year long, full honours degree equips you with the knowledge, skills and understanding to build your professional career, including access to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS),  which can be achieved on completion of an additional PGCE course.

As a graduate of our Primary Education accelerated degree course, you will be guaranteed an interview for a PGCE at London Met, as well as a 20% discount on further study. While some universities offer three-year courses that lead to QTS, our accelerated Primary Education degree combined with a PGCE provides you with greater opportunities – read on to find out more.

The formal title of the course is Primary Education BA (Hons). This is what will be shown on the certificate and transcript.

More about this course

If you’re passionate about educating the next generation, our two-year Primary Education BA will provide you with the skills and experience to join the education workforce in rapid time. This accelerated course, designed so that you can focus on achieving the best possible degree classification, will allow you to graduate in just two years, instead of the traditional three years. This is without the extra pressure of having to meet the teacher standards to gain QTS while on a placement.

Following the two-year course you can then progress on to a PGCE. The reason an accelerated degree course only takes two years to complete is because you’ll study across three semesters rather than two. In year one, the three semesters are October to January, February to early May and May to late July. In year two the last semester finishes in May to ensure you can progress onto a PGCE, if desired.

The combination of an accelerated degree and a PGCE to achieve QTS has a number of benefits:

  • Studying an accelerated degree will help you achieve the best degree classification possible without the additional pressure of having to meet the teacher standards and gain QTS while on placement.
  • The placements you will carry out on the two-year accelerated programme will allow you to see and practise the skills and knowledge you are learning on the degree course, without having the judgement of whether you meet QTS at an early stage in your development as an educator.
  • This allows you to develop more as a reflective practitioner so that when you move onto the PGCE you have gained relevant and useful experience and have had time to reflect on your own skills and abilities.
  • On a PGCE you are supported individually by a link tutor from the University, who will help ensure you have the best possible experience, as well as a school-based mentor during your placements.
  • A PGCE is an internationally recognised qualification, allowing more flexibility in where you can teach once qualified.
  • A PGCE provides you with 60 master’s-level credits, which you can use towards a master’s in education at a later point in your career.

This course will help you form the ability to think clearly about educational theory and how it shapes practice. You'll achieve this through research-based innovation, ethical judgement and a capacity to work in collaboration with others. You will develop your understanding of research-based best practice, the ethical issues involved and how these help or hinder the delivery of social justice and equality.

Our London Met staff, who have many years' experience in the state education sector and higher education, will help you gain an abundance of experience. The curriculum is designed to aid you in becoming an effective teaching professional and build your understanding of educational systems.

Many of our students work as teaching asssistants while they study, allowing them to earn while studying modules that require school placements. These placements also provide excellent opportunities to observe practice and relate this to their learning in lectures and workshops.

QTS can be achieved by studying an additional one-year PGCE course – we’ll guarantee you an interview for a PGCE here at London Met on successful completion of the two-year Primary Education BA course.

Assessment

You will be assessed through a range of methods based on coursework. These include presentations, portfolios, posters and essays.

Fees and key information

Course type
Undergraduate
UCAS code X324
Entry requirements View
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Entry requirements

In addition to the University's standard entry requirements, you should have:

  • a minimum of three A levels with grades BBC (or a minimum of 112 UCAS points from an equivalent Level 3 qualification, eg BTEC National, OCR Diploma or Advanced Diploma)
  • GCSE English and either Mathematics or Science at grade C/4 or above (or equivalent)*
  • an enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check for any placement in a school

*If you have not passed any of the required GCSEs at Grade C/4, you can study for them at private centres. Alternatively, you could undertake an equivalency test through one of the following agencies: A* Equivalency or Equivalency.com. They will assess your level prior to undertaking the test, to ascertain how much teaching input you will need in order to pass.
If you do not hold a GCSE at grade C/4 or above in either Mathematics or Science, you will need to gain this or pass an equivalency test in order to be considered for a PGCE. Students graduating from the degree who hold a GCSE grade C/4 or equivalent in English and either Mathematics or Science are guaranteed an interview for a PGCE or equivalent route to QTS at London Met.

The course is designed to equip you to progress to a postgraduate programme offering QTS and therefore the expectation is that you possess the necessary qualifications before commencing the degree.

Accelerated study

The degree may be accelerated, but it offers full access to all of the University’s sports, social, and scholarly networks as well as expert careers and other advice, including support for disabilities and recognised special educational needs. Opportunities to work and study abroad may be available within the programme. Whether work or social, opportunities for collaborations across our diverse student body will make your experience at London Met unforgettable.

Accreditation of Prior Learning

Any university-level qualifications or relevant experience you gain prior to starting university could count towards your course at London Met. Find out more about applying for Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL).

English language requirements

To study a degree at London Met, you must be able to demonstrate proficiency in the English language. If you require a Student visa you may need to provide the results of a Secure English Language Test (SELT) such as Academic IELTS. This course requires you to meet our standard requirements.

If you need (or wish) to improve your English before starting your degree, the University offers a Pre-sessional Academic English course to help you build your confidence and reach the level of English you require.

Modular structure

The modules listed below are for the academic year 2023/24 and represent the course modules at this time. Modules and module details (including, but not limited to, location and time) are subject to change over time.

Year 1 modules include:

This module currently runs:
  • all year (September start) - Tuesday morning

This module aims to:

• Extend, consolidate and enhance the meaning of the curriculum
• Explore how children learn
• Reflect on and capture students personal learning journeys and the influence these have on their learning and teaching
• Analyse pioneers of learning theories and how they influence learners and learning in the 21st century
• Enable students to understand the early years and primary curricula, exploring the distinctiveness of each phase
• Engage students in thinking about the relevance of subject knowledge and how this impacts on effective delivery of the taught academic and pastoral curricula
• Examine assessment in the curriculum and how this is linked to progression of learning
• Understand early years and primary pedagogy

This module currently runs:
  • all year (September start) - Tuesday afternoon

This core module addresses a key aspect of professional knowledge in the early years field and aims to enable students to:

• Study relevant legislation, curriculum frameworks, codes of practice and official guidance in all areas of social inequalities;

• Understand the development of diverse identities in children and explore issues of stigmatisation, labelling, stereotyping and discrimination;

• Consider that children’s experience of childhood will be mediated by class, race, gender, culture, language, sexual orientation, age and disability through reflecting on their own identities and experiences;

• Develop an understanding of the concepts of inclusion and diversity as they relate to both children and adults in their sphere of work and to critically reflect on their own practice in seeking to address inequalities;

• Current childhood policy contexts will be considered, with regards to children’s rights, equity and discrimination and the role of educational settings in both perpetuating and resisting inequalities and in working with children to develop positive views of diversity;

• Consider the children as active in shaping their own childhood and how practitioners can develop a listening culture in settings and thereby act as an informed advocate for children across the age ranges and for their families.

This module currently runs:
  • all year (September start) - Monday afternoon

This module aims to:

This module will introduce and explore key academic skills to support students throughout the course. It will also introduce and make clear links to AE5017 in supporting students to reflect on and plan areas for development in relation to their own learning, research and professional practice skills. This module will also encourage students to foster their own research interests and reflect on research design. This aims to support progress across the course and link to their final year AE6P06 action research project.

Students will engage in critical exploration of a variety of academic texts. Key concepts relating to educational research will be explored. In particular, this will cover discussions around ethical research practice. Students will also be encouraged to begin thinking about situating research within differing social, political, cultural and environmental contexts.

This module currently runs:
  • all year (September start) - Monday morning

The module aims:

• To offer students a broad overview of educational policies, themes and issues that will encourage reflection on their experience and inform their identities as educational professionals.

• To situate these policies, themes and issues within historical, political, social, economic and global contexts thereby opening up students’ educational imagination.

• To consider the meaning of primary education, along with debates over its values in relation to social, economic and personal goals.

• To introduce pedagogy, curricula and assessment.

• To enable students to construct and use critical languages and appropriate vocabulary to express their knowledge and understanding of education and professional practice.

• To recognise education as a site for dispute, controversy and contest and the responsibilities of teachers as social pedagogues.

• To encourage discussions about social justice in education and decolonising the curriculum.

This module currently runs:
  • summer studies - Monday
  • summer studies - Monday morning
  • summer studies - Tuesday

This module is designed to enable students to undertake a period of work-based learning, in relation to their course at level 5, within an appropriate organisation, and to gain credit for that learning. Students will have the opportunity to apply, to test and to extend the knowledge that they have gained at all levels of their course. In so doing, students will be able to enhance and extend their understanding of professional educational practice. The module will also afford them the opportunity to gain professional experience of an appropriate education-related work environment.

Students will be expected to find and organize their own placement in an educational setting where they get insight into professional teaching and learning practice. Objectives of the placement might be in relation to professional standards, how teaching and learning is facilitated, or intended outcomes of interventions.

The module is framed by Kolb’s (1984) learning style model, the four-stage learning cycle: planning – reflecting – interpreting – identifying next steps. This cycle will inform both the module structure and the assessment strategy.
At the beginning of the module, students will attend a series of workshops where they will be briefed on the module and undergo induction. Guidance on securing a placement will be offered in conjunction with the career service, including inputs on personal and professional development.
Students will need to have their work-based learning agreement approved, before they take up the opportunity to gain practical experience.

During the work-experience, students will reflect on their observations and actions with respect of the objectives of their learning agreement and wider professional standards. There will be two or three feedback sessions allowing students to discuss their own practice and learning.

Towards the end of the work-based learning period there will be a series of workshops to support students’ interpretation of their experience in relation to theory and professional educational practice.

Students will also be offered scheduled opportunities to prepare for the QTS skills tests prior to application for PGCE places (or equivalent).

References
Kolb, D. (1984) Experiential learning experience as a source of learning and development, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Year 2 modules include:

This module currently runs:
  • all year (September start) - Thursday morning

• To introduce subject content of the National Curriculum and Religious Education to students.

• Demonstrate practical ways in which topics and/ themes can be delivered creatively through good subject knowledge and an in-depth understanding of assessment and pedagogies.

• To engage with influences of learning between child development and the curriculum and the impact this has on effectively teaching the creative curriculum.

• To enable students to understand multiculturalism, inclusion and diversity in primary curriculum including education for social justice.

This module currently runs:
  • all year (September start) - Friday afternoon

This module offers an opportunity for independent study and aims to enable students to:

• Examine childhood as a historically and culturally constructed phenomenon and understand the role of institutions and professional practice in reproducing those constructions;

• Explore the intersections of social variables with childhood and the position of children as social actors;

• Reflect on ways that settings can and do respond to differences;

• Introduce students to the spatial turn across the social sciences and its affordances in offering insight into children’s lives;

• Equip students with practical and workable approaches to research enquiry with children.

This module currently runs:
  • all year (September start) - Thursday afternoon

The module aims:

• To offer students opportunities to understand primary education through historical themes of continuity, change and difference.

• To demonstrate the historical nature of primary school as a commonplace phenomenon in the 21st century and thereby to suggest that it will be subject to change in the future.

• To propose a social constructionist understanding of schooling and educational institutions.

• To explore the language of pedagogical practice in relation to the goals of education and the meaning of childhood.

• To explore the struggle between formal and progressive educational discourses for control over curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

This module offers an opportunity for independent study and aims to enable students to:

- Undertake a professional placement in an educational setting.

- Develop further professionally by pursuing a line of study that arises out of an aspect of interest from the course.

- Extend professional competence by developing a critical understanding of the relationship between theory and practice.

- Introduce some of the major positions/philosophies in relation to research methods.

- Develop an understanding of the major research methodologies used in the field of early years/primary education by building on modules taught on the course for example AE4021 and AE5017.

- Develop an awareness of ethics in relation to research design, execute and evaluate a small-scale research project and experience supervised independent study of an extended nature.

- Develop some of the skills required for post-graduate study.

This module currently runs:
  • all year (September start) - Friday morning

The emergent 21st century has brought with it significant challenges for education and for educators. This module explores and investigates these challenges along with some informed speculation on likely directions for educational development. It examines the impact of globalisation, economic restructuring and encounters with cultural difference. The relationship of these phenomena to educational reform is examined along with its implications for the future of schooling. The module encourages students to consider possible educational responses to these challenges at policy, curricular and institutional scales as well as at a personal level, thereby preparing them for a role as active professional agents.

The module aims to:

• Situate education, schooling and teaching within a broad, but accessibly interpreted social, political and economic context.

• Offer students knowledge of a number of pressing challenges at global and local scales and to open up consideration of educational responses to them, along with possible linkages between them.

• Develop skills supporting formal discussion, informed debate and the judicious use of evidence to form and substantiate arguments.

• Encourage students to consider their standpoint in relation to the themes and issues examined, as well as the meaning of being a teacher in light of these challenges.

Where this course can take you

Our two-year Primary Education BA is primarily designed to allow you to progress on to the role of classroom teacher for children aged between three and 12 years old. This can be achieved once you’ve gained Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), which can be acquired through a PGCE that you can do here at London Met. Alternatively, you can also progress onto a master’s degree in a related field.

Upon completion of this degree you will be confident in your knowledge of primary education theory and practice, and therefore in an ideal position to progress to a PGCE course to achieve QTS. Gaining QTS through a PGCE means you will gain 60 master’s-level credits, which can be used towards a master’s in education at a later point in your career if desired.

This course also supports those wishing to enter alternative professional roles specialising in children and their well-being. Education graduates have gone on to careers as teaching assistants, support workers and teachers in nurseries, primary and secondary schools.

Continuing your studies with us

The School of Social Professions has a wide range of exciting industry-linked programmes available on a full-time and part-time basis in education, health, social and community work. The following courses would be ideal for progression into postgraudate study:

If you've already studied your undergraduate degree with us, as a graduate of London Met, you'll be entitled to a 20% discount on any further study with us.

If you've already studied your undergraduate degree with us, as a graduate of London Met, you'll be entitled to a 20% discount on any further study with us.

Important information about this course

We're committed to continuously improving our degree courses to ensure our students receive the best possible learning experience. Many of the courses in our School of Social Sciences and Professions are currently under review for 2023-24 entry. We encourage you to apply as outlined in the how to apply section of this page and if there are any changes to your course we will contact you. All universities review their courses regularly and this year we are strengthening our social sciences and professions courses to better reflect the needs of employers and ensure you're well-equipped for your future career.

Additional fees

Please note, in addition to the tuition fee there may be additional costs for things such as equipment, materials, printing, textbooks, trips and professional body fees. 

Additionally, there may be other activities that are not formally part of your course and not required to complete your course, but which you may find useful (for example, optional field trips). The costs of these are additional to the tuition fees set out above and will be notified when the activity is being arranged. 

Discover Uni – key statistics about this course

Discover Uni is an official source of information about university and college courses across the UK. The widget below draws data from the corresponding course on the Discover Uni website, which is compiled from national surveys and data collected from universities and colleges. If a course is taught both full-time and part-time, information for each mode of study will be displayed here.

How to apply

If you're a UK applicant wanting to study full-time starting in September, you must apply via UCAS unless otherwise specified. If you're an international applicant wanting to study full-time, you can choose to apply via UCAS or directly to the University.

If you're applying for part-time study, you should apply directly to the University. If you require a Student visa, please be aware that you will not be able to study as a part-time student at undergraduate level.



When to apply

The University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) accepts applications for full-time courses starting in September from one year before the start of the course. Our UCAS institution code is L68.

If you will be applying direct to the University, you are advised to apply as early as possible as we will only be able to consider your application if there are places available on the course.

To find out when teaching for this degree will begin, as well as welcome week and any induction activities, view our academic term dates.

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