Successful completion of the Foundation Year will enable you to progress into the first year (Level C) of your chosen honours degree. If you are a full time UK student, you will qualify for student financial support for the full duration of your course (subject to relevant criteria).

A significant part of our Degree with Foundation Year focuses upon core skills such as academic writing at HE level, becoming an independent learner, structuring academic work, critical thinking, time management and note taking.

The Degree with Foundation Year is particularly suitable for those who wish to undertake studies in the following subjects: 

Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Science

The Foundation Year is a full-time course and forms the first year of a four-year degree. You will be a student of the University and have access to all the standard support systems and resources that any degree student would be able to access.

Programme structure

Teaching on this programme will be a mixture of lectures, tutorials and individual learning. You will have approximately 12 teaching hours per week, for 26 weeks of the year.

Assessment and feedback

Assessment on this programme includes essays, exams and an Individual Learning Project. The Individual Learning Project will be your opportunity to relate your studies to the subject you want to progress onto.

You will receive written feedback on all of your assessments, and you will have the opportunity to discuss this is more detail with your tutor.

Tuition Fees

The tuition fees for the Degree with Foundation Year for 2019/20 are £9,250.

If you are a student from the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands, your tuition fees will also be £9,250.

The University reserves the right to increase Home and EU Undergraduate and PGCE tuition fees in line with any inflationary or other increase authorised by the Secretary of State for future years of study.

Additional Costs

On top of your tuition fees, you also need to consider costs such as purchasing books and travel. For subject-specific additional costs, please see the relevant undergraduate course page.

You will also need to consider the cost of your accommodation whilst you study at university. Visit our accommodation pages for further details about our Halls of Residence.

Additional help

For information about funding from the Government, please see our Government help page.

All students will follow 3 strands in their Degree with Foundation Year.

They will choose one from Block 1 (Education, Humanities or Environmental & Health Science), and one from Block 2 (Social Science, Business or Mathematics, Computing & Psychology). All students must take Block 3 - Enhanced Learning.

Block 1

Education

Examples of topics you may cover during lectures, seminars and tutorials in this strand include:

• What is Education?
• Why do we educate?
• Democracy and Education
• Education, Equality and Society
• The Psychology of Learning and Teaching in Educational Settings
• Inclusion and Education
• Teaching and Learning in Practice
• Approaches to Pedagogy
• History of Childhood
• Understanding Children’s Development
• Health and Wellbeing of Children
• Contemporary Educational Issues

Humanities

Examples of topics you may cover during lectures, seminars and tutorials in this strand include:

• War/Conflict and Peace
• Social Justice and Poverty
• Slavery and Emancipation
• What it means to be human
• Religion and secularisation
• Gender and sexuality
• Artificial Intelligence 
• Thought & Emotion

Environmental & Health Science

Examples of the topics that may be studied in this strand are:

• Fundamental Biology of the natural world
• Fundamental Environmental Chemistry
• Practical skills in science - field based investigations (residential and non-residential) and laboratory investigation
• Food and land use
• Fundamentals of geology, geomorphology and natural hazards
• Location, space and place
• Pollution and its impacts – water and air
• Soils – their structure, function and importance
• Sustainable development – the environmental, social and economic fundamentals

Block 2

Social Science

Examples of topics you may cover during lectures, seminars and tutorials in this strand include:

• What is Social Science?
• Studying Social Problems
• Politics and Welfare
• Young People and Society
• Who Gets What? - Social Justice
• Social Divisions
• Health and Social Care
• Work and Employment
• Forms of Social Control
• Understanding Social Issues

Business

Examples of topics you may cover during lectures, seminars and tutorials in this strand include:

• What is business? What is management?
• People in organisations
• Skills for Business
• Business in Context
• What is Marketing?
• Markets, Customers and Consumers
• The Marketing Mix (The 7Ps - Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Physical Evidence, Process)
• Information requirements of business
• Financial Reporting
• Contemporary issues in finance and economics
• Interpreting Financial Statements

Mathematics, Computing & Psychology

Examples of topics you may cover during lectures, seminars and tutorials in this strand include:

• Foundational philosophy for scientific thinking
• Fundamentals of computer science
• Fundamentals of gaming
• Humans and machines
• Mathematics for scientists
• Reality and simulation – the fundamentals
• What are scientific problems?
• What is the mind?

Block 3

Enhanced Learning

Examples of the following skills may be developed in seminars and tutorials as we explore the Education, Humanities, Social Science and Business curriculum:

• Becoming a learner at HE level
• Time management and planning
• Information retrieval and evaluation
• Reading at HE level
• Academic writing and criticality
• Structuring academic work and note taking
• Referencing and proof reading
• Team work
• Presentation skills

Applications for our Degree with Foundation Year must be made through UCAS. When making an application, you will need to specify which degree you wish to continue onto once you have completed your Foundation Year programme.

Please view our Degree with Foundation Year A to Z for a full list of all available programmes.