Leading Educational Change and Improvement PGA

Find out more about our Leading Educational Change and Improvement PGA course.

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P-X30R

Postgraduate Award (PGA)

1 term part-time

6 October 2025

Education Studies

University of Warwick

Develop your understanding of leading educational change and improvement on this short course. Warwick's Education Studies offers this PGA as a bridge to further education, you will develop an understanding of education change through research and practical perspectives.

This short course will allow you to develop an understanding of educational change and improvement from a research and practical perspective, and look at how that can impact teaching and learning outcomes. Suitable for teachers, researchers and administrators, you will be comparing evaluating and critiquing international reform efforts and developing knowledge about the dynamics of leading improvement as a strategy for change.

The course may also be used as a bridge course towards applying for the MA Educational Leadership and Management.

Skills from this degree

• Understand competing paradigms and methodologies in educational research
• Ability to examine the relationship between quantitative and qualitative research methods
• Identify theoretical and methodological grounds on which education research is based
• Analyse the relationship between research questions, method and methodology
• Assess the efficiency and effectiveness of educational research from different perspectives and methodologies
• Gain familiarity with different research practices and conduct ‘micro’ studies in the practice of educational research

Depending on which module you select, the course is either delivered entirely online, through a dedicated distance learning portal, or face to face with weekly lectures. For the online variant, you will use a mixture of online text extracts and journals, and will undertake regular tasks alongside their end-of-module assignments. Alternatively, for the face-to-face variant, the course will be delivered through a variety of teaching methods: lectures, seminars, discussions, presentations and case studies.

Support will be given via email and/or face-to-face with your subject tutor, depending on the delivery mode chosen for the module chosen.

Class Size

Support will be given via email with your subject tutor.

Assessment types vary depending on modules selected but may include different types of assignments, of varying lengths, as well as oral presentations. You will also complete a dissertation based on an individual research project, with support from a research supervisor. 

Reading lists

If you would like to view reading lists for current or previous cohorts of students, most departments have reading lists available through Warwick Library on the Talis Aspire platform.  

You can search for reading lists by module title, code or convenor. Please see the modules tab of this page or the module catalogue.   

Please note that some reading lists may have restricted access or be unavailable at certain times of year due to not yet being published. If you cannot access the reading list for a particular module, please check again later or contact the module’s host department.  

Additional course costs

You may wish to undertake some research with children or young people that may require a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check or a Certificate of Good Conduct for students from outside of the UK. A Certificate of Good Conduct can vary in price.

Please contact your academic department for information about department specific costs, which should be considered in conjunction with the more general costs below, such as:

• Core text books
• Printer credits
• Dissertation binding
• Robe hire for your degree ceremony

Find out more about our additional course costs.

Your timetable

Your personalised timetable will be complete when you are registered for all modules, compulsory and optional, and you have been allocated to your lectures, seminars and other small group classes. Your compulsory modules will be registered for you when you join us.

2:2 undergraduate degree (or equivalent), along with experience of working in an educational setting.

• Band B
• IELTS score to 7 overall, no more than two components at 6.0/6.5 & rest 7.0+

There are no additional entry requirements for this course.

Optional Modules

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