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Summary:
Course Code: C67F
Course Code: C670
Course Code: C671
Where Are You Applying From?
How Would You Like To ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½?
When Do You Want To Start Your Studies?
Which Campus Would You Like To ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ At?
Which Options Would You Like With Your Course?
Why choose the School of Sport Science and Physical Activity
Our sports science courses rank in the UK top 15 in their subject field (Daily Mail university rankings, 2024).
You will benefit from placements with our official partners Luton Town FC as well as other football organisations and clubs.
Our graduates have gone on to work in roles across the football sector including FIFA and professional clubs in the UK and overseas.
About the course
We offer two football-related pathways (coaching or business) where you choose your preferred specialism after your first year. This course prepares you to work as a skilled coach across a variety of football settings. You learn a range of coaching skills to help you deliver and plan training sessions; evaluate performances; implement improvement strategies; and put your learning into practice in football-related scenarios. There are also opportunities for placements, including with our official Education Partners, Luton Town FC.
Course accreditation / industry endorsement
We increase the employability of our graduates by being a Higher Education Partner of the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA).
Facilities and specialist equipment
- Purpose-built strength and conditioning facility
- Free gym and Olympic weight room
- Sports arena
- Multi-use games areas
- Sports therapy and rehabilitation centre with a sports injury clinic, open to staff, students and external athletes/clients
- Sports massage rooms
- Industry-leading performance-analysis equipment, including a Nacsport camera system, In-Play Sports online performance analysis and Catapult GPS system
Industry links
We are official Education Partners of Luton Town FC. We also enjoy working relationships with other football clubs and organisations, giving you the opportunity to put your learning into practice.
Your student experience
- Our Bedford campus is a small, thriving academic community where academic staff get to know you well; you also have the support of your own personal academic tutor who will guide and support you throughout your student journey.
- Gain valuable work experience at our Human Performance Centre, which offers testing to sports people, teams and the public for fitness, flexibility and body composition assessments.
- Take advantage of coaching opportunities with local schools and football clubs.
- Take part in behind-the-scenes tours and match-day experiences to football clubs such as Luton Town FC and MK Dons as well as local football organisations and non-league clubs.
- Field trips include St George’s Park, Burton-on-Trent, the home of England Football, and football clubs around the country.
with Professional Practice Year
This course has the option to be taken over four years which includes a year placement in industry. Undertaking a year in industry has many benefits. You gain practical experience and build your CV, as well as being a great opportunity to sample a profession and network with potential future employers.
There is no tuition fee for the placement year enabling you to gain an extra year of experience for free.
*Only available to UK/EU students.
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with Foundation Year
A Degree with a Foundation Year gives you guaranteed entry to an Undergraduate course.
Whether you’re returning to learning and require additional help and support to up-skill, or if you didn’t quite meet the grades to pursue an Undergraduate course, our Degrees with Foundation Year provide a fantastic entry route for you to work towards a degree level qualification.
With our guidance and support you’ll get up to speed within one year, and will be ready to seamlessly progress on to undergraduate study at Bedfordshire.
The Foundation Year provides an opportunity to build up your academic writing skills and numeracy, and will also cover a range of subject specific content to fully prepare you for entry to an Undergraduate degree.
This is an integrated four-year degree, with the foundation year as a key part of the course. You will need to successfully complete the Foundation Year to progress on to the first year of your bachelor’s degree.
Why study a degree with a Foundation Year?
- Broad-based yet enough depth to give you credible vocational skills
- Coverage of a variety of areas typically delivered by an expert in this area
- Gain an understanding of a subject before choosing which route you wish to specialise in
- Great introduction to further study, and guaranteed progression on to one of our Undergraduate degrees
The degrees offering a Foundation Year provide excellent preparation for your future studies.
During your Foundation Year you will get the opportunity to talk to tutors about your degree study and future career aspirations, and receive guidance on the most appropriate Undergraduate course to help you achieve this; providing you meet the entry requirements and pass the Foundation Year.
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Course Leader - David Pears
I have worked at the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ since 2006 and am currently a senior lecturer in the faculty of Education and Sport at the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ with responsibility for coordinating all academic study of coaching and player and match analysis.
Course Leader - David Pears
I have worked at the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ since 2006 and am currently a senior lecturer in the faculty of Education and Sport at the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ with responsibility for coordinating all academic study of coaching and player and match analysis.
Course Leader - David Pears
I have worked at the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ since 2006 and am currently a senior lecturer in the faculty of Education and Sport at the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ with responsibility for coordinating all academic study of coaching and player and match analysis.
What will you study?
ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ing our BA (Hons) Football Coaching course will equip you with the knowledge, skills and experience to work in the sports industry in general, but more specifically the football industry with a focus on football coaching and performance analysis. You will gain a broad understanding of the study of football in the unit Introduction to Football Studies that will introduce many of the areas of study that you will engage with later in the course such as psychology, performance analysis, player potential and development, technical and tactical understanding, and coach development. In the unit The Football Industry, you will explore the football industry as well as its impact on contemporary society. You will look closely at the causes of fandom and question what makes people support a particular team - successful or unsuccessful – while also examining how economic factors have shaped football into a global cultural phenomenon. Furthermore, you will actively engage with a suite of units across the course focused on player development and performance by developing practical coaching skills to provide positive learning environments for performers in our Foundations for Football Coaching unit, the first of four practical football coaching units. This unit is followed by Applied Football Coaching where you will explore the relationship between understanding your role as a coach and understanding the player to apply your practical coaching knowledge.
The knowledge, experience and skills gained in these units provide the foundations to study Advanced Coaching for Football and Coaching Alternative Populations. Understanding Football Governance is an important, but understudied area of football and this unit will help you to understand how football organisations operate at all levels. You will then learn to apply this knowledge within sport organisations in our Sport in Action: Management unit while examining the role of the state, non-profit and professional sectors in sport. In areas of the mind, you will look at the Social Psychology of Sport by analysing theories, principles and concepts to understand behaviour and its effects on performance and participation in sport and physical activity. You will then use this information in a football context to inform player development in our Long-Term Player and Coach Development unit and Applied Sport Psychology units. The coaching units above tie in closely to units on Football Development, Long-Term Player and Coach Development, Performance Analysis and Performance Analysis for Football. In Football Development we assess youth development programmes in football from around the world to highlight best practice used to identify and support talented young players. We then make connections to Long-Term Player and Coach Development where we examine what player potential looks like at various ages, how to identify this and the best ways to develop this potential.
Long-term coach development is also considered as you build on the career planning that starts in week one. Career planning and personal development is a central pillar across the course and is built into numerous units. For example, in all the practical coaching units you are required to engage with your own personal development planning, including the completion of an allocated number of hours of coaching experience in a real-world setting. In our performance analysis units Performance Analysis and Performance Analysis for Football, you will use industry standard tools to analyse individual and team performance and then learn how to provide effective feedback from your findings. These units link very closely to the football coaching units by underpinning understanding of the technical and tactical aspects of football. In order to provide a broad view of the football industry, we continue the discussions that began early in the first year and address the challenges facing those who use football for social change in our Football in the Community unit. As stated above, career planning and development is central to the course and its aims. To prepare you for your career, our Working in Sport and Physical Education unit will introduce you to multiple career pathways available within the sport & physical activity industry.
Career planning and development is also built into the football coaching units (Foundations for Football Coaching, Applied Football Coaching, Advanced Coaching for Football and Coaching Alternative Populations) and the units Work Experience for Sports Science and Physical Activity and Work Placement Project provide opportunities to gain extensive industry experience towards the end of the course. You can also undertake a Professional Practice Year (Sport Science and Physical Activity) that will allow you to gain work experience while developing your professional skills. This is a one-year programme that sees you taking a year out from formal study to work in industry before returning to university to complete the final stage of your degree. Finally, you will have the opportunity to complete an independent study, where we offer two options, a Dissertation for Sport Science and Physical Activity or a Work Placement Project. To help you with this, you will study a suite of research-based units that span the course; Introduction to Research Methods, Research Methods for Sport, Exercise and Physical Activity and Dissertation Preparation. These units will prepare you to complete an independent project at the end of the course, while also enabling you to read and understand research, to complete a proposal with ethical documentation and to write a coherent independent research project.
How will you be assessed?
You will be required to undertake a variety of assessments that vary depending upon the learning outcomes of the unit. The range of assessment types includes: written reports and essays, oral presentations, e-portfolios, phase tests and collaborative projects. In addition you will undertake practical assessments related to the design, planning and delivery aspects relevant to a wide variety of football coaching projects providing opportunities to develop and demonstrate critical analysis, problem solving and communication styles needed in coaching.
Assessment of these activities will be based on tasks which develop vocational skills underpinned by subject knowledge requiring higher levels of cognition in the upper levels of the course. As you progress through the levels of study the marking criteria for all assessment styles undertaken will be that much more rigorous with the expectation you progressively demonstrate a more theory driven understanding of football coaching issues and practices.
Our teaching and learning strategy enables us to provide a very practical course with many opportunities for feedback and support from both staff and peers. Formative assessment is undertaken to allow for opportunities to act on feedback when completing summative assessment.
Careers
Our graduates are able to secure a wide range of roles in the football industry as well as the wider sports industries. Examples include, but aren’t limited to, academy coach; broadcast executive; first-team performance analyst; academy performance analyst; referee development officer; head of recruitment; broadcast sport technology specialist; sport business owner; sports business technology owner; first-team sport scientist; commercial development and global strategic partnership manager; and academic roles in other universities.
These roles, and others, have been with a wide range of clubs in the FA Premier League and English Football League as well as with FIFA and in countries outside of the UK such as USA, Latvia, China and Malaysia.
Students often also progress to postgraduate degrees such as our Sport Leadership & Management MBA and Sport & Physical Activity (Leadership & Management) MA.
Entry Requirements
Entry Requirements
Entry Requirements
Fees for this course
UK
The full-time standard undergraduate tuition fee for the Academic Year 2025/26 is £9,250 per year. You can apply for a loan from the Government to help pay for your tuition fees. You can also apply for a maintenance loan from the Government to help cover your living costs. See
Excellence Scholarships
Worth £2,500 per year of study over three years when you score a defined number of UCAS tariff points from specified qualifications*
» If you don’t qualify for an Excellence Scholarship but have 120 UCAS tariff points, you have enough points for one of our Achievement Scholarships offering £500 per year of study**
» Other scholarships, bursaries and financial support packages are available
* Points requirements vary depending on type of qualification.
** Threshold is 120 UCAS tariff points across all awarding bodies and qualifications.
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International
The full-time standard undergraduate tuition fee for the academic year 2025/26 is £16,900 per year.
There are range of Scholarships available to help support you through your studies with us.
A full list of scholarships can be found here.
Fees for this course
UK
The full-time standard undergraduate tuition fee for the Academic Year 2025/26 is £9,250 per year. You can apply for a loan from the Government to help pay for your tuition fees. You can also apply for a maintenance loan from the Government to help cover your living costs. See
Excellence Scholarships
Worth £2,500 per year of study over three years when you score a defined number of UCAS tariff points from specified qualifications*
» If you don’t qualify for an Excellence Scholarship but have 120 UCAS tariff points, you have enough points for one of our Achievement Scholarships offering £500 per year of study**
» Other scholarships, bursaries and financial support packages are available
* Points requirements vary depending on type of qualification.
** Threshold is 120 UCAS tariff points across all awarding bodies and qualifications.
Ìý
International
The full-time standard undergraduate tuition fee for the academic year 2025/26 is £16,900 per year.
There are range of Scholarships available to help support you through your studies with us.
A full list of scholarships can be found here.
Fees for this course
UK
The full-time standard undergraduate tuition fee for the Academic Year 2025/26 is £9,250 per year. You can apply for a loan from the Government to help pay for your tuition fees. You can also apply for a maintenance loan from the Government to help cover your living costs. See
Excellence Scholarships
Worth £2,500 per year of study over three years when you score a defined number of UCAS tariff points from specified qualifications*
» If you don’t qualify for an Excellence Scholarship but have 120 UCAS tariff points, you have enough points for one of our Achievement Scholarships offering £500 per year of study**
» Other scholarships, bursaries and financial support packages are available
* Points requirements vary depending on type of qualification.
** Threshold is 120 UCAS tariff points across all awarding bodies and qualifications.
Ìý
International
The full-time standard undergraduate tuition fee for the academic year 2025/26 is £16,900 per year.
There are range of Scholarships available to help support you through your studies with us.
A full list of scholarships can be found here.