Sport Coaching and Physical Education (with Placement year)

Please note the course title has changed to BSc (Hons) Sport Coaching and Physical Education [with Placement year].

What practical and scientific skills do you need to work as part of a team? Find out as you work towards a career in coaching, PE teaching or sports development at our Cambridge Centre for Sports and Exercise Science, using specialist facilities accredited by the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences. Learn from current and former elite athletes and coaches, gain external qualifications as part of your course and get real experience working with 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.

We also offer optional training programmes to improve strength and conditioning coaching and you’ll have the opportunity to join a number of sports clubs and societies as part of Active Anglia.

We work closely with Living Sport and Cambridge City Council to provide additional work experience opportunities. You’ll have the chance to work on community projects that will improve the confidence and ability of those from disadvantaged backgrounds, opening up opportunities to work in youth development in the future.

In your final year you’ll have a unique opportunity to choose between a final year research project or you can choose to work and complete a project in industry (i.e. schools/sport teams/local govt. sport providers) and deliver on an organisations strategic priority, as a result potentially creating a service/product/change that helps them fulfil their needs.

By studying at ARU, you'll benefit from highly-experienced lecturers, including practising sport therapists, coaches, conditioning specialists, sports analysts, psychologists, nutritionists, and world-leading researchers. Our team currently includes a Paralympian World Record holder, a Scottish Women’s Rugby player and a Judo champion. We also host visiting guest speakers as part of our Excellence in Sport seminar series, which has had an array of speakers including Olympians, world record holders, elite coaches, an International Cricketer and Commonwealth gold medallist!

To top it all off, the Cambridge Centre for Sports and Exercise Sciences offers an Excellence in Sports seminar series, featuring guest speakers from industry.

You have the option to take a placement year as part of your degree -https://aru.ac.uk/student-life/support-and-facilities/careers-and-employability/placements

Check out our Sport Scholarship for promising athletes - https://aru.ac.uk/student-life/preparing-for-university/help-with-finances/scholarships/sport-scholarship.