Program Overview

You’ll explore education from many theoretical and ideological perspectives in your core modules. This in-depth knowledge of the education industry, combined with your specialist subject knowledge, gives you that all-important edge when you embark on your professional education career.

Secondary Education

A warm welcome to Education Secondary at Bath Spa University

Education Secondary is taken as a combined honours award in education studies. It is ideal if you have the ambition and prerequisites (see entry requirements) to become a secondary school teacher.

Education Secondary develops your knowledge, critical understanding and skills needed to explore education in a variety of ways and become change makers of the future. It enables you to appreciate what education is for, how it is constructed and how it succeeds or fails in its aims. As such, it is not ‘teacher training’ or a ‘theory.’ It is a course that helps you understand education and schooling from a variety of viewpoints informed by theory, practice and research. It will help you understand your place in teaching and give you an excellent preparation to embark on one of our post-graduate teacher training courses

The programme places you in secondary classrooms in each year of your degree. It also offers you placement in other educational contexts, including opportunities for international visits and study abroad. Education Secondary is combined with your other chosen academic subject e.g. biology. At the end of the programme you have the option to continue onto our Secondary PGCE course in your subject specialism; Primary PGCE or to apply for alternative routes into teaching.

We will offer you personalized academic support. Each year you will have an academic tutor who will help you identify your academic strengths and how to build on these. In addition, we work closely with our Careers and Employability team who offer support and advice about future careers opportunities and the application processes for initial teacher training.

You can also take this programme as a 'sandwich' degree, studied over 4 years.  This includes a Professional Placement Year module, taken in the education sector. The placement year is usually taken after you have completed year two of your degree. During this time you will be able to apply knowledge gained during your studies in a work environment.

Creative Arts Practice

Creative Arts Practice is a multidisciplinary course that offers you the opportunity to study two areas of art and design practice simultaneously.

Disciplines include painting, ceramics, mixed-media textiles, graphic arts, sculpture, printmaking, performance, photography and digital arts

The multidisciplinary nature of the programme encourages synthesis of materials, methods and thinking, fostering inquisitive, experimental and playful making that will challenge yourself and established notions of art and design practice.

With the support of a community of students and staff you will learn to develop your individual practice through a balance of material exploration, practical making and conceptual thinking.

The initial stages of the course are structured to introduce you to, and equip you with, the skills and confidence to work within your disciplines, and prepare you for an independent programme of negotiated study.

Teaching consists of practical instruction and demonstration, academic and technical workshops, lectures, studyvisits and seminars. Individual and group tutorials are vital to our teaching, through these and a range of visual and verbal assessments, you will receive critical and supportive feedback on your practice.

Integration of context with practice is essential for the successful contemporary artist/designer, so you will undertake a programme of historical and critical contextual analysis that is designed to encourage you to research, understand and critically reflect on art and design practice.

The development of your professionalism and life/work skills is central to the programme. Through live projects, collaborations with external institutions, exhibitions, competitions and lectures by visiting practitioners, you will be given the opportunity to develop your professional confidence and skills.

These outward facing projects encourage collaborative working, problem solving and entrepreneurship, preparing you for work as a professional artist/designer or as an employee within the creative industries.