On this course, you will meet and work with others who will be embarking on a similar journey to your own, in an environment designed for adult learners.

Successful completion of the course (involving good attendance and marks for assessed work) guarantees you a place on the University of Warwick’s part-time BA (Hons) Social Studies Degree or part-time Early Childhood Foundation Degree.

Learn more from the course tutor Steve Gascoigne:

This film was made in 2016.

There are flexible entry requirements with consideration given for non-traditional qualifications, as well as work and life experience.

Applicants are interviewed by the course selector, and there will be a short written exercise to do.

• The Gateway course is an equivalent level of study to Access or A-levels.
• You can study part-time at your own pace, around work and family commitments.
• You will develop skills, knowledge and confidence to study at one of the top universities in the world.
• Successful completion (attendance throughout the programme and passing all three pieces of assessed work) guarantees a place on the BA (Hons) Social Studies Degree or Foundation Degree in Early Childhood.
• Develop academic skills such as assignment writing, referencing and discussion and debating skills with your peers on the programme.
• We will also endorse successful students who intend to apply to other universities.

Hear from our students how they find the course. All opinions are their own.

This film was made in 2018.

The course is intended to prepare you for higher education study by:

• Introducing key concepts within the social sciences
• Exploring topics related to early childhood, families and communities
• Introducing important social science disciplines
• Giving you key skills for higher education study
• Giving you access to the University library and teaching you study skills, such as referencing.

This course develops from your own experiences, encouraging you to think about your own identity and the identity of others, such as children and their families. The course looks at wider issues that impact on you - exploring themes around the local, the national and the global environment. We start by drawing very much from your personal experiences – using these experiences to introduce ‘academic’ ways of thinking and talking about familiar and local contexts. We then move on to wider social and psychological themes such as shopping, work, the environment, relationships and how the learning can be applied to early childhood and social studies before widening still into global issues. Challenging you to consider the relationship between the global and the local from the perspectives of early childhood, adolescents, adulthood, and their communities.

The course is currently being taught online and has been carefully adapted. The materials for each session are provided in advance. The online platform allows for interaction in different ways depending on how comfortable you are with computers. How you interact online and how much you interact is up to you – your tutor will never make you interact in a way you are not comfortable with. All sessions will be recorded and can be watched at any time. Your tutor will also provide a short email summary of the class each week. There will be lots of opportunities to contact your tutor during the course.

• Media
• Communities
• Food
• Families
• Education
• Shopping
• Work
• Early Childhood
• Care
• Environment
• Migration
• Globalisation

The programme is delivered by Dr Steve GascoigneLink opens in a new window who teaches on the part-time BA (Hon) in Social Studies. Also Teaching Fellow Karen Baxter who teaches on the part-time Foundation Degree in Early Childhood.

We are passionate about the programme, and we are dedicated to offering a unique pathway into higher education. The sessions that you will attend as part of this programme are relaxed but formative. We will encourage you to discuss different topics and be inspired by others who are also on the programme.

If you are reading this information, you have already made your first important step regarding Higher Education and your future Learning journey and we're looking forward to meeting you.

Applications are open for November 2022 - apply online.

If you are applying, have a look at our course application guidance page.

This is a free course. View potential additional fees.

For details of student funding for anyone who progresses on to our BA (Hons) Social Studies degree or Early Childhood foundation degree, please visit the student funding webpages.

Sessions are planned to take place every Tuesday on the following dates (breaks for Christmas and Easter):

• 22 November to 6 December 2022
• 10 January to 28 March 2023
• 25 April to 23 May 2023

The sessions will take place from 10am to 1pm, and will be face to face at the University of Warwick.

The Gateway to HE is also delivered on Tuesday evenings starting in March 2023, this course will open for applications in December.