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). This means that students who successfully graduate (with at least second class honours) achieve the graduate recognition needed to pursue a career in psychology.
In Education, Policy and International Development you consider historical and contemporary discussions concerning these areas, and the role of education 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. You will also have 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, 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 initial teacher training in primary education or, for those on the Education, English, Drama and the Arts track, in secondary English.

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 (usually available in libraries, though students may wish to buy their own copies of core texts) - Estimated cost £50
Optional: Education, English, Drama and the Arts track: contribution to theatre trips - Estimated cost c.£5-10 per trip
Required: Coursework printing – Estimated £15-£23 across the year if in A4 colour and printed in the Faculty

Year 2

Required: Coursework printing – Estimated £15-£30 across the year if in A4 colour and printed in the Faculty
Optional: Education, English, Drama and the Arts track: contribution to theatre trips - Estimated cost c£5-10 per trip

Year 3

Required: Coursework printing – Estimated £8-£25 across the year if in A4 colour and printed in the Faculty
Depending on dissertation topic: Dissertation travel and/or DBS costs – Costs vary depending on the nature of the chosen topic
Optional: Education, English, Drama and the Arts track: contribution to theatre trips - Estimated cost c£5-10 per trip

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 graduates are extremely varied and include a wide range of occupations in the UK and abroad. As well as further study and teaching, our students have gone into research, educational psychology and neuroscience, publishing, and the Civil Service. Others now work in government policy and administration, the media, theatre, heritage and museum education, HR, business and consultancy, charities and NGOs, and international development.

Course Outline

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

You attend approximately four to six lectures and seminars, and one or two hours of supervision per week.

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 which have a strong interdisciplinary emphasis, introducing major themes in education:

Critical Debates in Education – discussing core questions of education and key transformations that require a reimagining of education for the 21st Century in light of increased inequality, life-long learning, digitalisation, globalisation and climate change
Language, Communication and Literacies – exploring the social, psychological and material context within which communication, spoken language and literacy are developed in childhood

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

Education, Psychology and Learning – Learning and Human Development, and another introductory psychology paper
Education, Policy and International Development – Education, Global Inequalities and Social Justice; and a paper chosen from a list of options (topics may include: social theory, the modern state, international conflict)
Education, English, Drama and the Arts – Poetics, Aesthetics and Criticism; and another track-specific paper (topics may include: practical and historical understandings of theatre, studies of literature and culture, approaches to human scholarship)

Year 2 (Part IB)

In Year 2, you take five papers. Two are compulsory – Designing Educational Research (combining problem-based learning with hands-on activities to introduce key research methods), and The Emergence of Educational Thinking and Systems (exploring the dynamics that shape educational institutions and the implications for communities, societies and power relations) – and you choose your third from several other education topics.

Your other two papers are track dependent:

Education, Psychology and Learning – a paper providing you with the foundations of psychological study, and a further psychology paper
Education, Policy and International Development – International Issues in Inclusion and Diversity in Education, and a paper from a list of options (topics may include: international literatures, globalisation, modern societies)
Education, English, Drama and the Arts – two papers chosen from a range of options, including some papers offered by the Faculty of English (topics may include: global creativity, creating for an audience)

Year 3 (Part II)

In Year 3 you take five papers: a compulsory dissertation of 8,000-10,000 words and two papers on particular issues in Education (examples which may be off ered include: Social Theory and Education, Children’s Literature or Play, Creativities and Imagination). In addition, you will take two further papers. At least one of these will be specific to your track. Topics for these papers may include: childhood, literature and reading, intersection of theatre and society, critical debates and approaches in education, policy and international development, and psychology and learning.

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. 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.

Admission assessment

For 2021 entry, some Colleges may require applicants for Education to take a written assessment at interview, if interviewed.

Assessment format

Information about the format of the at-interview assessment will be available here by the end of June 2020.

See Admission assessments for further details.

Submitted work

Applicants to some Colleges are required to submit one or two School/college essays as examples of written work prior to interview. See Education: Subject Requirements and Typical Offer by College for a list of Colleges that require submitted work and visit individual College websites for further details.

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