Education

Education is a rewarding interdisciplinary degree that allows you to combine the study of educational and social issues with one of three specialist areas: psychology of learning, international development or English, drama and the arts.

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Overview

Education at Cambridge

Education is one of our most powerful means for change and growth in the modern world. On our course, you follow one of three tracks, studying Education alongside your chosen field of interest, which will include the opportunity to study in other Faculties relevant to your chosen track.

The Education, Psychology and Learning track focuses on education from a psychological perspective, exploring human development and education in a variety of social and cultural environments. This track is accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS).
In Education, Policy and International Development you consider historical and contemporary discussions concerning these areas, and education’s role in economic and social change.
Education, English, Drama and the Arts is the study of English literature with key issues in education – such as debates around creativity, learning and culture – while giving you the option of studying practical drama.

Facilities and resources

The Faculty of Education has excellent resources and facilities within a purpose-built building, designed to support teaching, learning and research. There is a psychology laboratory and a library that houses an extensive collection of material on education and related fields. Active research forms the foundation of our teaching so you're taught by academics at the forefront of their fields and who specialise in cutting-edge research.

Further study and professional qualifications

Our course provides excellent preparation for a wide range of Masters and doctoral research programmes, both at Cambridge – each track has close links to related MPhil programmes within the Faculty – and elsewhere.

Alternatively, for those intending to teach, the course provides a foundation from which to proceed to some initial teacher training courses (eg a PGCE).

Course costs

Tuition fees

Information on tuition fee rates for Education is available on the tuition fees page.

Additional course costs

Year 1

Strongly recommended: Books (available in libraries) - Estimated cost £50
Optional – Education, English, Drama and the Arts: contribution to theatre trips - Estimated cost c£5-10 per trip

Year 3

Optional: Dissertation travel/DBS costs (depending on topic)

Changing course

Part II of Education is also available to undergraduates who have successfully completed Part I of another course, in which case it's normally taken as a two-year course.

To be able to change course, you need the agreement of your College that any change is in your educational interests, and you must have the necessary background in the subject to which you wish to change – in some cases you may be required to undertake some catch-up work or take up the new course from the start/an earlier year. If you think you may wish to change course, we encourage you to contact a College admissions office for advice. You should also consider if/how changing course may affect any financial support arrangements.

After Cambridge

The career options for an Education graduate are extremely varied and they find employment in a wide range of occupations and fields in the UK and abroad. Many have gone into academic research, educational psychology and neuroscience, publishing, teaching and the Civil Service, along with those now working in government policy and administration, journalism and the wider media, theatre, community arts, heritage and museum education, management and HR, business and consultancy, charities and NGOs, and international development. Many graduates also pursue careers associated with their combination subject.

Course Outline

In your Supplementary Application Questionnaire (SAQ) you should indicate which track you’re interested in studying.

You attend four to six lectures and seminars, and one or two hours of supervision per week in the first year.

You’re assessed at the end of each year. Depending on the papers studied, this will be through coursework, written examination, or a combination of both. In the third year, all students also submit a dissertation.

Year 1 (Part IA)

You take four papers, including two compulsory Education papers:

Critical Debates in Education – introducing major themes in education and Faculty research
Language, Communication and Literacies – exploring the social, psychological and material context within which spoken language and literacy are developed

Your two remaining papers are determined by the track you’re following:

Education, Psychology and Learning – Learning and Human Development, and Introduction to Psychology
Education, Policy and International Development – Education, Global Inequalities and Social Justice; and a paper from choices in the Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS) and Geography courses
Education, English, Drama and the Arts – Poetics, Aesthetics and Criticism; and either Drama Production or Literature and Culture

Year 2 (Part IB)

In Year 2, you take five papers. Two are compulsory – Designing Educational Research (a project in research design), and The Emergence of Educational Thinking and Systems (covering historical and philosophical perspectives on key aspects of education) – and you choose your third from several other education topics.

Your other two papers are track dependent:

Education, Psychology and Learning – Formal and Informal Contexts of Learning, and Social and Developmental Psychology
Education, Policy and International Development – International Issues in Inclusion and Diversity in Education,
and a paper from either the HSPS or Geography courses
Education, English, Drama and the Arts – two papers chosen from: International Literatures, Arts and Cultures; Theatre Practice and Production; a dissertation on a film, drama or English Literature topic; one paper from a range off ered by the English Faculty

Year 3 (Part II)

You submit a dissertation of 8,000-10,000 words, then take a further four papers. Two of these are on particular issues in education.

The next is a track specific paper:

Education, Psychology and Learning – Education, Neuroscience and Society
Education, Policy and International Development – Critical Debates in Education, Policy and International Development
Education, English, Drama and the Arts – either Children’s Literature; Performance, Education and Society; or Shakespeare

For your final paper, you can take another ‘issue in education’ paper, or choose a paper from options in other relevant courses.

For further information about studying Education at the University of Cambridge see the Faculty of Education website.

Entry Requirements

Typical offers require

A Level: A*AA
IB: 40-42 points, with 776 at Higher Level

For other qualifications, see our main Entrance requirements pages.

Course requirements

Required by all Colleges: no specific subjects
Required by some Colleges: A Level/IB Higher Level in a subject relevant to the track you want to study

See Education: Subject Requirements and Typical Offer by College for College-specific requirements/preferences. All undergraduate admissions decisions are the responsibility of the Cambridge Colleges. College-specific information on this website has been provided by the individual Cambridge Colleges – please contact the relevant College admissions office if you have any queries about College-specific requirements.

See also Entrance requirements and The Subject Matters for additional advice about general requirements for entry, qualifications and offers.

Admissions assessment

All applicants are required to take the pre-interview written assessment for Education (Arts-Humanities Admissions Assessment - see below for further details) at an authorised centre local to them (for a lot of applicants, this will be their school/college).

Assessment format

Section 1: Reading Comprehension (60 minutes)
Section 2: Critical response to text(s) (60 minutes)

Arts-Humanities Admissions Assessment (Education) Specification 2019

You must be registered in advance (separately to your UCAS application) to take the assessment – the registration deadline is 15 October 2019. Please note that open centres may set an earlier deadline for accepting entries, and it is your responsibility to check if this applies at your centre. Your assessment centre must register you for the pre-interview assessment; you’re not able to register yourself. See the written assessments page for information about assessment centres and registration.

The pre-interview written assessment for Education will be taken on 30 October 2019. Please check the Cambridge Assessment Admissions Testing website for scheduled start times.

Please note that your performance in the pre-interview assessment will not be considered in isolation, but will be taken into account alongside the other elements of your application.

Mature students (aged 21 or over) applying to one of the mature Colleges should refer to the relevant information about pre-interview assessments on the written assessments page.

Specimen and past papers

A specimen paper has been produced to allow you to sample the written assessment format and practice under timed conditions. It is not expected that you will answer every question correctly; the written assessment is designed to be challenging. Even some strong candidates may not complete the paper in the time allowed; it is designed to distinguish across our field of high-calibre applicants.

Experience with similar assessments and from trials indicates that, on average, typical applicants to the most highly selective undergraduate courses (who are by definition academically very able) will gain approximately half of the available marks. The best applicants will score more highly, but only relatively few are expected to gain more than 80 per cent of the available marks.

Written assessments help admissions tutors to assess whether candidates have the skills, aptitudes and any required subject knowledge and understanding required to study the relevant course at Cambridge. They are only one of the elements used in the admissions process. Others include a candidate’s academic record and forecast grades in school-leaving examinations; UCAS application form; examples of recent written work submitted to the College to which they are applying; and performance at interview, if invited to attend.

From 2019, the pre-interview written assessment for Education will be administered with four other subjects within an Arts-Humanities Admissions Assessment question booklet. Section 1 will have identical questions. Section 2 will have subject-specific questions. Please ensure you answer the appropriate question or questions for your subject in Section 2.

Specimen Papers:

Arts-Humanities Specimen Paper - Section 1: Question Paper
Arts-Humanities Specimen Paper - Section 1: Text Booklet
Arts-Humanities Specimen Paper - Section 1: Answer Sheet
Arts-Humanities Specimen Paper - Section 1: Answer Key
Arts-Humanities Specimen Paper - Section 2: Question Paper
Arts-Humanities Specimen Paper - Section 2: Answer Booklet

Submitted work

Applicants to the following Colleges are required to submit one or two School/college essays as examples of written work prior to interview. See individual College websites for further details.

Christ's
Churchill
Downing
Fitzwilliam
Gonville and Caius
Homerton
Lucy Cavendish
Queens'
St Edmund's
Selwyn
Wolfson

For further information about studying Education at the University of Cambridge see the The Faculty of Education website.

Resources

Find out more about Education at Cambridge

The Faculty of Education - Explore Education in more detail on the faculty website.

Education, Psychology and Learning track - Education, Psychology and Learning track content, structure and further information

Education, Policy and International Development track - Education, Policy and International Development track content, structure and further information

Education, English, Drama and the Arts track - Education, English, Drama and the Arts track content, structure and further information

Application details - Information on the entry requirements and application procedure from the Faculty of Education.

Frequently Asked Questions - Education course FAQ

Why Us? - Information on student life, facilities and support available from the Faculty of Education

Discover Uni

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Contextual information

Discover Uni allows you to compare information about individual courses at different higher education institutions. This can be a useful method of considering your options and what course may suit you best.

However, please note that superficially similar courses often have very different structures and objectives, and that the teaching, support and learning environment that best suits you can only be determined by identifying your own interests, needs, expectations and goals, and comparing them with detailed institution- and course-specific information.

We recommend that you look thoroughly at the course and University information contained on these webpages and consider coming to visit us on an Open Day, rather than relying solely on statistical comparison.

You may find the following notes helpful when considering information presented by Discover Uni.

Discover Uni relies on superficially similar courses being coded in the same way. Whilst this works on one level, it may lead to some anomalies. For example, Music courses and Music Technology courses can have exactly the same code despite being very different programmes with quite distinct educational and career outcomes.
Any course which combines several disciplines (as many courses at Cambridge do) tends to be compared nationally with courses in just one of those disciplines, and in such cases the Discover Uni comparison may not be an accurate or fair reflection of the reality of either. For example, you may find that when considering a degree which embraces a range of disciplines such as biology, physics, chemistry and geology (for instance, Natural Sciences at Cambridge), the comparison provided is with courses at other institutions that primarily focus on just one (or a smaller combination) of those subjects.You may therefore find that not all elements of the Cambridge degree are represented in the Discover Uni data.

Some contextual data linked from other surveys, such as the National Student Survey (NSS) or the Destination of Leavers in Higher Education (DLHE), may not be available or may be aggregated across several courses or several years due to small sample sizes. When using the data to inform your course choice, it is important to ensure you understand how it has been processed prior to its presentation. Discover Uni offers some explanatory information about how the contextual data is collated, and how it may be used, which you can view here: https://discoveruni.gov.uk/about-our-data/.

Discover Uni draws on national data to provide average salaries and employment/continuation data. Whilst starting salaries can be a useful measure, they do not give any sense of career trajectory or take account of the voluntary/low paid work that many graduates undertake initially in order to gain valuable experience necessary/advantageous for later career progression. Discover Uni is currently piloting use of the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data to demonstrate possible career progression; it is important to note that this is experimental and its use may be modified as it embeds.

The above list is not exhaustive and there may be other important factors that are relevant to the choices that you are making, but we hope that this will be a useful starting point to help you delve deeper than the face value of the Discover Uni data.

Undergraduate Study