Our Autism postgraduate certificate is designed to support your career progression, increase your subject knowledge and help you to make a direct difference to your school and students. Modules on offer will benefit you if you work in professional or voluntary education and training, and want to enhance your skills and knowledge.
The Autism PGCert is a stand-alone qualification and counts as one-third of a master’s degree.
This course is suitable if you are a mainstream teacher or working in learning support, responsible for supporting children with autism and wishing to deepen your knowledge and develop your career progression.
Flexible work-based learning enables you to fit studying around your existing work or voluntary commitments.
Teaching and mentoring is delivered by a successful teaching team with an outstanding national reputation and comprehensive research profile that informs and advances course content.
Scholarships
Some scholarships may be eligible for this course. Find out more in the fees and funding section below.
Location Brighton: Falmer
Part-time 1 yearPart-time Flexible and distributed learning
Please make sure that you meet the entry requirements before applying. If you have any questions the course team will be happy to help.
Apply now for your place
Entry requirements
Degree and experience
You will need a good honours degree, and experience in an education setting. All applicants are interviewed in person or by telephone.
Course structure
The PGCert is a one-year part-time programme. You will undertake three 20-credit modules combining academic study with work-based action learning and action research. Your day-to-day professional activity will shape your development through reflection and peer discussion.
The course is designed to fit in with your working patterns and usually includes twilight and Saturday sessions.
All the specialist PGCerts are offered at Falmer campus subject to meeting the minimum numbers of participants. They can also be offered off site to an organisation, school or a cluster of schools.
Please see contact details in the Find out more section.
Areas of study
You will deepen your understanding beyond a more practical ‘hints and tips’ approach which will enable you to link study to the priorities of your educational setting.
This programme will focus on the following areas of study:
The programme will enable you as a practitioner to:
Modules
Engaging in Professional PracticeThis module is designed to facilitate postgraduate study. The emphasis is on developing critical thinking and approaches to learning. You will explore your understanding of autism and consider strategies to address your own professional learning and development needs.
Reflective PracticeThis module looks at the historical perspective and introduces current research on autism providing an insight into the impact it can have on the child. A variety of strategies and interventions will be considered in the light of research into good practice in autism education.
Case studyThis module provides you with an opportunity to apply the learning from module 2 in order to facilitate positive change in your professional practice. You will undertake a case study of an individual learner and plan a series of interventions to support the learner’s needs. This will require you to identify, explore and develop theoretical and reflective understanding of the issues presented; consider solutions and implement and evaluate changes made.
Our Autism PGCert is designed to support your career progression, increase your subject knowledge and help you to make a direct difference to your school and students.
Graduates of the course are well placed to take on subject development and leadership positions.
UK/EU (part-time)1,958 GBP
We offer a range of scholarships for postgraduate students. Bursaries and loans may also be available to you.
Find out more.
When costs such as health or DBS checks, field trips or use of specialist materials are incurred as a mandatory requirement of the course they are included in your tuition fee.
You may incur additional costs depending on the optional modules or activities you choose. The cost of optional activities is not included in your tuition fee and you will need to meet this cost in addition to your fees. Before you apply check with the school that provides your course using the contact details in the Find out more tab (at the end of this page) for advice about what is included and what optional costs you could face so you can budget accordingly.
Location
Brighton has been called the happiest place in the UK, and it’s easy to see why. With five miles of pebble beach, more than 300 pubs and a packed festival calendar, Brighton is the ideal place to spend your student years.
Arts and culture: The Royal Pavilion is the most famous landmark in Brighton, opening its doors to around 400,000 tourists every year. Right next door is the Brighton Dome, the south coast’s premier multi-arts venue, and the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, which holds a diverse collection of decorative arts, textiles and archaeological artefacts.
Festivals: The Brighton Festival is now the largest arts festival in England and a major milestone in the international cultural calendar. Meanwhile, The Great Escape has been established as the UK’s leading event for new music, with over 300 bands playing 30 venues across the city over three days.
Nightlife: Aside from the many nightclubs that line the city’s seafront, student favourites include The Haunt, Concorde 2 and Patterns, which attract leading bands and DJs from around the world. If you don’t feel like dancing, you can take your pick from the many hundreds of pubs and bars that dot the city centre.
Shopping: The quirky North Laine district houses Brighton’s finest collection of boutique shops and independent cafes, while the narrow, winding streets of the South Lanes house collections of jewellery and antiques. Churchill Square is the city’s main shopping centre and serves all of your high street needs.
Sports: Brighton’s seaside location offers the perfect opportunity to try paddle boarding, kayaking and windsurfing. Further into the city, The Level has a skate park for skateboarders and BMX riders to practise their skills.
Campus where this course is taught
Surrounded by the South Downs National Park and just five miles from the centre of Brighton, our Falmer campus has benefited from over £60million of investment over the past 10 years. 7,000 students are based here, studying subjects including English, education, social science, nursing and medicine.
Recent developments include the Falmer Sports Centre – with its fitness suites and sports hall – and the innovative Checkland Building, which has natural ventilation systems and an insulating green roof.
Falmer has also recently installed more than 600 solar panels, which reduce the campus’s carbon emissions by more than 80 tonnes. The renovation has made us one of the top universities in the UK for on-site renewable energy production.
Accommodation
Our Brighton halls of residence are located across the city in Grand Parade, Moulsecoomb, Varley Park and Falmer.
Our Grand Parade campus is in central Brighton and has one hall of residence, Phoenix Brewery, within walking distance. We have around 300 rooms available in Phoenix Brewery, which are all ensuite and self-catered.
Moulsecoomb is two miles from the city centre and also has one hall of residence, Moulsecoomb Place, on campus. All accommodation in Moulsecoomb Place is catered, offering breakfast and an evening meal during term time. There are more than 150 rooms available here, with six to eight rooms per flat.
Varley Park offers the biggest choice of student accommodation with ten halls of residence. The site is four miles from Brighton centre but within walking distance of Falmer train station.
Falmer campus has two halls of residence: Great Wilkins and Paddock Field. Great Wilkins offers 150+ self-catered single rooms and one-bed couples flats, while Paddock Field offers 450+ catered and self-catered single rooms only. All rooms in Falmer are en-suite.
Aside from halls, you have the option of Unihomes, which we let out to our students on behalf of private landlords. The rent covers all utilities and includes £5,000 of contents insurance for your personal belongings.
You can also choose to join the many students who live away from campus in private rented accommodation. We have a list of high-quality, university-endorsed private sector accommodation and can help you find housemates to move in with.
Find out more on our Brighton accommodation webpages and if you have any questions, our accommodation team will be happy to help. You can contact them by email at accommodation@brighton.ac.uk or by telephone on 01273 644100.
Maps
To discuss your suitability or the nature of the content involved contact the course team.
School of Education01273 643386deped@brighton.ac.uk