Sport Coaching and Physical Education (with Placement year) BSc (Hons)

Overview

Want to become a sports coach or PE teacher or work in sport development? Learn the essential practical and scientific skills you need to work as part of a team, or as an effective leader. Test your skills and enhance your employability power with opportunities to take placements in local schools and sports clubs.

Our course will teach you the most important aspects of sports coaching and physical education. These essential elements include sport development, applied coaching pedagogy (how people teach and learn), athlete development, physiology and psychology. You’ll learn how to apply all of this knowledge and as a result, help make you more effective in teaching, coaching or other broader areas of sport development.

Our modules cover theoretical and practical approaches to coaching and physical education. Put these together and you’ll be able to operate ethically, safely, and confidently when working independently or as a team member.

To do this, you’ll use our fantastic facilities which include exercise testing and multipurpose human movement laboratories with its specialist equipment including notational analysis software, heart-rate monitors, GPS, breath-by-breath oxygen-analysis systems and accelerometers along with our strength and conditioning suite.

While on the course, you’ll have the opportunity to gain nationally recognised coaching qualifications, complete work placements in local schools and sports clubs, and apply to internship programmes to spend time working with professional sports teams or other sectors of the sports business. You’ll develop experimental and analytical skills, as well as transferable skills such as communication, teamwork, problem solving, creative thinking and independent working.

Assessment

Throughout the course, we’ll use a range of assessment methods to help you and your tutors measure your progress. We’ll assess you throughout each year, meaning that we can help you stay on the right track.

You’ll complete exams, practical skills tests, presentations, scientific reports, data-handling exercises, case study critiques, computer assessments and a research project on a topic of interest.

Careers

We work with employers to make sure you graduate with the knowledge, skills and abilities they need. They help us review what we teach and how we teach it – and they offer hands-on, practical opportunities to learn through work-based projects, internships or placements.

We have links with many sports organisations, and you’ll have the opportunity to do research projects with them while you’re studying. This offers an early insight into the world of employment, and keeps you up-to-date with who’s hiring. While you’re studying, we also encourage you to become a student member of UK Coaching, to keep up with opportunities in the sector.

You’ll be able to choose from a wide range of careers once you graduate. These might include teaching (school/college), coaching (community level or performance), performance analysis, physical training, sport development, and the wider health, fitness and leisure industry.