Sport Coaching - BSc (Hons) Degree

This degree can be studied as a three-year full-time degree or a four-year full-time degree that includes a year of foundational study.

We offer two foundation year routes for our undergraduate sport degrees; each delivered at a different campus.

You can choose to study the Sport Foundation Year at our Cyncoed Campus, or the Management Foundation Year at our Llandaff Campus, depending on your interests and preferred location.

Whichever route you choose, successful completion will allow you to progress onto one of our undergraduate sport degrees.

Find out more about the foundation years:

• Foundation Leading to Sport
• Foundation Leading to Management (Sport)

The foundation year is intended to prepare you for your subsequent years of studying, offering you the chance to strengthen your skills, knowledge and confidence. The foundation year will be relevant to:

1. Students who aspire to enrol onto the first year of a science-based honours degree programme within the Cardiff School of Health Sciences, who have not achieved the standard entry requirements to enter at year one of the chosen degree.
2. Students who have not studied subjects that provide the necessary background within the scientific disciplines required to enter at year one of the chosen degree.
3. Mature students who have been out of the formal education system for some time.

Please note: You will need to apply using a specific UCAS code if you wish to undertake the 4 years including foundation.

The BSc (Hons) Sport Coaching degree is designed to support your transition into university and enhance your learning and engagement as you progress through the course. We’ve carefully structured the content, assessments, and learning experiences to help you develop both academically and professionally. You’ll gain insights into a range of sports and industries and you’re able to shape your degree by developing expertise in specific topics, sports and contexts that are meaningful to your goals and future aspirations.

Year 1 (120 credits)

In your first year, a key focus is developing both competence and confidence in your practical coaching ability. You’ll work on essential coaching skills and explore a variety of coaching methods, such as Games Based Approaches – designed to support the planning and delivery of engaging, impactful sessions.

You’ll have the opportunity to coach a range of sports and activities in supportive environments with your peers and progress to coaching different people in different contexts. These experiences will help enhance your knowledge about building coaching relationships and raise important conversations regarding safeguarding, inclusive practice and the ethical responsibilities of coaching.

All compulsory modules:

• Professional and Academic Development (40 credits)*
• Coaching Practice: Design and Delivery (40 credits)
• Understanding Sport Coaching Relationships (40 credits)

Year 2 (120 credits)

Building on your experience of applying a range of coaching methods, your second year will explore the theories and concepts that support and explain them. Work-placement opportunities help you become established in real coaching environments, where you can apply your growing knowledge of athlete learning and coaching relationships to build meaningful connections of your own.

Project based work will help you learn important research skills and strengthen your ability to think critically, make evidence-informed decisions, and prepare you for the academic and practical demands of your final year. The selection of an optional module will allow you to focus on an area that aligns with your career aspirations or areas of interest.

Compulsory modules (100 credits):

• Project-Based Learning (40 credits)*
• Sport Coach as Educator (40 credits)
• Placement: Developing Personal and Professional Practice (20 credits)

Optional modules (choose 20 credits)**:

• Coaching with Sport Science Data (20 credits)
• Nutrition: Macro and Micronutrients (20 credits)*
• Fundamentals of Strength and Conditioning (20 credits)
• Personal Training for Public Health (20 credits)
• Sport, Health and Society (20 credits)
• Sport Performance Analysis (20 credits)
• Sport Development: Context and Challenges (20 credits)
• Sustainable Development and Sport (20 credits)
• Dance Education (20 credits)
• Models-Based Practice (20 credits)
• Sport Ethics (20 credits)*
• Creating Sport Content – Video for Social Media (20 credits)

Year 3 (120 credits)

Your final year will challenge and support you in becoming a more independent and critical individual helping to prepare you make a lasting impact on others. The work placement module will develop your responsibility within an organisation – applying your skills to drive positive change and influence practice. Another compulsory module will shift the focus from your own development to supporting the growth and learning of other coaches.

With expert guidance, you’ll also design and deliver a final project that is based on a topic which matters to you – whether it's a personal interest, a professional concern, or a question you've encountered in practice. Your choice from a range of optional modules provides you a further chance to shape your degree and develop expertise in an area that is meaningful to you.

Compulsory modules (100 credits):

• Final Project (40 credits)*
• Placement: Sport Coaches as Agents-for-Change (40 credits)
• Coaching the Coach (20 credits)

Optional modules (choose 20 credits)**:

• Strength and Conditioning Coaching (20 credits)
• Nutrition in Sport and Exercise (20 credits)
• Exercise Practitioner (20 credits)
• Ethical Issues in Sport (20 credits)*
• Sociology of Sports and Physical Cultures (20 credits)
• Sport Development in Action: Policy, Process and Practice (20 credits)
• Applied Interdisciplinary Practice (20 credits)
• Managing High Performance Sport (20 credits)
• Digital Voice: Communicating Sport Through Podcasting (20 credits)

*Available through the medium of Welsh.

**We believe your education should reflect your interests, ambitions, and future goals. That’s why on this degree we are offering you a bank of option modules from which to select, enabling you to shape your learning journey. Having a bank of options from across a range of sports related disciplines in year two and three will let you personalise your degree, deepen your expertise, work with students and staff from different degrees, and build a wider range of skills for a changing world. Whilst we are offering you a choice of optional modules these will delivered subject to demand and availability.

Effective learning, teaching and assessment methods underpin the educational aims and the learning outcomes of all our programmes and modules. Throughout our undergraduate degrees we focus on providing the authentic learning experiences to both challenge and develop all our students. Authentic learning is a learner-centred approach in which you’ll develop your knowledge and skills by engaging in, and addressing, real life problems that demand the use of higher order thinking skills, real world resources and tools while thinking and acting like an expert within the context of your degree. Across the range of undergraduate sport degrees, you’ll experience “project and practice ways of working”, where you’ll experience working on real challenges, projects or problems set by people and communities that value to support and solutions that you can offer and acknowledge the value of learning through real experiences.

To facilitate authentic learning, we utilise a diverse range of learning and teaching methods that may include lectures, seminars, workshops, tutorials and practical sessions. All of these are supported by our Virtual Learning Environment which is an integral but flexible aspect of the learning package that supports your needs. Typically, lead lectures introduce key topics, concepts and challenges, whilst seminars, tutorials, workshops and practical sessions focus on the application of key concepts with the aim of enhancing your student experience and engagement. We work hard to provide authentic, student-centred learning opportunities that deliver a high quality and flexible learning environment but focuses on enabling you to develop into a flexible, highly employable graduate of the future.

Learning and teaching methods will also emphasise and facilitate the development of your critical reasoning and encourage the integration of practice and theory. Throughout your studies, you will experience both tutor-led learning and self-directed methods of learning, increase independence and reflection and encourage you to develop a positive attitude toward lifelong learning. Along the way you’ll have the support of a Personal Academic Tutor who is there to support you pastorally and academically during your time at Cardiff Met.

We aim to help you to develop into a reflective professional and critical scholar.

In your sport degree at Cardiff Met, you will encounter a learning experience from induction to graduation that is coherent, challenging and develops your confidence, competence and identity within your programme of study.

Specific features of the learning experience on Sport Coaching include:

• Practical Coaching Experiences: From the beginning of the course, we use a range of practical experiences to help you learn. You’ll engage in supportive environments working with your peers and transition to coaching one-off events with our external partners and real-world placements working with children, adults, individuals, teams and communities.
• Coaching to Make a Difference: You’ll go far beyond learning about the technical and tactical aspects of coaching. We’ll help you understand the important role and responsibility you have in creating a meaningful and positive experience for others.
• Placements and Professionally Recognised Qualifications: Through the degree you’ll have the opportunity to complete two work placements requiring a minimum of 80 hours work (we can help you find these opportunities). You’ll also have the chance to gain vocational coaching and professional qualifications from a range of organisations.
• Caring and Expert Staff: Staff are internationally renowned researchers and coaches and bring their experiences into the classroom to support your learning. We care about your development and work hard to build professional relationships with you to help you succeed.

The assessment strategies for each module vary to ensure that most appropriate method is implemented for your area of study. Modes of assessment are designed to both enhance but also challenge your learning experience whilst ensuring that you have fulfilled the learning outcomes linked to each module. Assessment also ensures that you have achieved the standard required to progress to the next stage or to qualify for an award. The modules are designed to support your learning experience by providing opportunities for you to engage in formative and summative assessments to test your knowledge, ability, skill, and critical understanding. The undergraduate modules are assessed using a diverse range of assessment methods. For example:

• Written coursework
• Group challenges
• Oral presentations
• Portfolios of work and evidence
• Seen and unseen exams
• Practical skills
• Viva voce examinations
• Professional discussions
• Industry placements and situational learning
• Other activities designed to assess, develop, and enhance academic and employability skills

You will be expected to complete a final project as part of the assessment of your honour’s degree. Final projects are major pieces of work that may be a research, innovation, consultancy or community project.

All undergraduate sport degrees are underpinned by the Cardiff School of Sport and Health Sciences employability framework. This framework has been developed as a holistic curricular and extra-curricular approach to embedding employability across the undergraduate portfolio, and ensures programmes recognise and develop opportunities to enhance your employability by blending the following elements:

• Disciplinary knowledge
• Work based learning
• Work related learning
• Career development planning
• Entrepreneurship and enterprise education
• Graduate skills and lifelong learning
• Developing professional identity

During your first year of study, you will get the opportunity to undertake professional development activities across a diverse range of industry relevant areas including sport coaching, exercise training, and health and safety. These opportunities will ensure that you have the appropriate qualifications and experience to progress with your studies and, where your programme requires it, apply for one of the many work placement opportunities on offer both on and off campus. We will also support you to seek opportunities to work or study abroad or engage in a year in industry.

You will graduate ready to pursue a career in community, participation and performance sport as well as educational roles such as PE teachers, heads of sport and school sport co-ordinators. If your interests lie outside of sport, then the content of the course, which is built around people and performance, has supported graduates to progress into career opportunities in the police, management and leadership contexts, recruitment and sales.

Graduates have also continued to study at a master’s and doctoral level within sport coaching, physiotherapy, strength and conditioning, performance analysis and primary and secondary education. Some students have pursued their own opportunities and created their own businesses, often generated through ideas developed during their undergraduate degree. Our Centre for Entrepreneurship provides on-going support for students looking to enhance their careers in this area.

Typical Offers

The following requirements are based on typical offers relevant to entering year 1 of the degree.

If you do not meet these entry requirements, we also offer two foundation year routes that would allow progression to Year 1 upon successful completion. Find out more about these two foundation routes in the ‘Foundation Year’ section (above) on this page.

• Tariff points: 104-112
• Contextual offer: See our contextual offers page.
• GCSE: Five GCSEs at Grade C / 4 or above to include English Language / Welsh First Language, Mathematics / Mathematics – Numeracy.
• English Language Requirement: Academic IELTS 6.0 overall with at least 5.5 in all elements, or equivalent.
• A level subjects: Three A levels to include grade BB. No specific subjects required. Welsh Advanced Skills Baccalaureate considered as a third subject.
• BTEC National / Cambridge Technical Extended Diploma: DMM
• T Level: Merit.
• Access to Higher Education Diploma: 15 Level 3 credits at Distinction and 30 Level 3 credits at Merit. No specific subjects required.
• International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma: Higher Level Grade 6. No specific subjects required.
• Irish Leaving Certificate: 3 x H2. No specific subjects required. Higher level subjects only considered, with a minimum grade H4.
• Scottish Advanced Highers: Grade C. No specific subjects required. Scottish Highers are also considered, either on their own or in combination with Advanced Highers.

Combinations of the above qualifications are accepted if they meet our minimum requirements. If your qualifications aren’t listed, please contact Admissions or refer to the UCAS Course Search.

Further information on Overseas qualifications can be found here.

If you are a mature applicant, have relevant experience or RPL that you would like us to consider, please contact Admissions.

How to Apply

Further information on how to apply can be found here.

For general enquiries, please contact the Admissions Team on 029 2041 6044 or email askadmissions@cardiffmet.ac.uk.

For course specific enquiries, please contact the Programme Support Team:

• Email: CSSHSLTSE@cardiffmet.ac.uk