Education (MSc)

The MSc Education is our flagship taught postgraduate degree and one of our most popular programmes. Students can apply for a general MSc Education or choose a specialist pathway to enhance their knowledge of a particular area.

Across the programme, you’ll consider key educational challenges and possibilities from a variety of theoretical, policy and practice perspectives.  

You’ll learn through a combination of lectures, student-led seminars and presentations, skills training and project work.  

You will complete compulsory courses and choose from a range of option courses, totalling 120 credits. If you take up a specialist pathway, compulsory and option courses will reflect your specialism. The Masters degree culminates in an independently researched dissertation for another 60 credits.  

Please note that courses, course content and pathways may change each year. 

Apply now

Visit the University’s Degree Finder for detailed entry requirements, fees, international grade equivalency, language requirements and to apply.

Pathways

Gain a broad foundation on our general MSc Education or specialise your degree by choosing a pathway in an area relevant to your educational and professional goals.

General pathway

This pathway offers you a broad base in the field of education, which is an ideal foundation to work in education policy, research or practice, or to progress to doctoral study. You can focus on topics that appeal to you specifically through our range of option courses.

Child and adolescent psychology

This pathway takes a psychological perspective towards understanding development from infancy to adolescence and placing it within a broad understanding of educational theory and policy.

Early childhood practice and Froebel

This pathway is for those interested in early childhood education who want to gain an advanced, critical understanding of Froebelian principles and other contemporary early years pedagogies.

Philosophy of education

This pathway explores a range of philosophical issues in education practice, policy and research from a variety of international contexts, traditions and perspectives.

Research pathway

This pathway equips you with essential applied skills in and knowledge of the main traditions and paradigms in educational research, enabling you to conduct further research in education, relevant for policy and practice.

Learn from internationally-recognised leaders

I found the MSc programme stimulating, engaging and challenging. I found the lecturers and administrative staff incredibly helpful and encouraging and they managed to achieve a delicate balance between pushing me to achieve my potential without driving me over the edge!

Sarah Grimson MSc Education graduate

Our staff are internationally recognised research leaders in their areas, so teaching is informed by the most up-to-date knowledge and thinking. Representing the interdisciplinary nature of education, staff come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including: 

  • developmental psychology 
  • the philosophy of education 
  • quantitative and qualitative research in education 
  • physical education and wellbeing 
  • community education 
  • child and youth studies 
  • sociology and education policy  
  • anthropology and education 

Teaching

Our programme explores a wide range of options for delivering education, and our teaching mirrors this variety. For example, while our compulsory courses consist mainly of lectures and related workshops, many of our option courses are seminar style. 

In the workshops, you will work with a tutor in small groups to make sense of the ideas and practices introduced in the lectures. Our seminar-style courses are longer sessions that blend direct instruction and discussion.

We record all lectures on compulsory courses so you can listen to them again to further and deepen your understanding. 

The lecturers and tutors were amazing, friendly and helpful. The programme director helped me to shape my individual study programme. All teaching staff were open for discussions and always encouraged students to ask questions.

Dina Kokina MSc Education graduate

Assessment

Assessments inform our teaching and support your learning. In all our courses, students receive feed-forward guidance about graded assessments.  

Typically, each 10-credit course has a separate piece of graded assessment. Our 20-credit courses usually contain two pieces of graded coursework. We carefully distribute assessment points throughout the programme to spread student workload and allow enough time for learning within courses before assessment.  

We have a range of tasks designed to assess the academic and professional knowledge and skills we want our students to develop. Tasks include traditional essays (these will generally only make up part of the final grade), group presentations, digital portfolios that show engagement with education research and practice, collaborative video presentations using various forms of digital media, grades for class and online participation and course-related blogs. 

Across the programme, we provide you with appropriate but supported degrees of freedom to choose the topics you wish to explore in your assessed tasks.  We want our tasks to be as meaningful as possible for students. As such, we regularly monitor and respond to students’ views on their courses’ assessment tasks.  

Support for your studies

You will have access to a range of support services if you need them throughout your degree.

We will assign you to a Student Advisor in your first few weeks at Edinburgh. This should be the first person to contact if you need help. They can guide you to other University service teams depending on what support you need.

Support for your studies

Careers

This programme can open up a wide range of careers within and outside of schools.

Our graduates have gone on to diverse roles such as:

  • teaching – primary and secondary schools, physical education or within ‘additional support’ contexts (Note: the MSc Education is not considered a teaching qualification in the UK and the degree does not provide teacher education. However, some countries do translate this degree as a teaching qualification.)
  • work in educational policy at local, regional, national and international levels
  • work in educational administration at all levels
  • advisors to politicians on educational matters
  • international recruitment for higher education institutions in Scotland and around the world
  • research work for charitable agencies related to education
  • community Education practitioners
  • doctoral research (PhD)

Without this experience, I definitely could not get my job. As my work is dealing with international students, this experience helped me to overcome difficulties in work, such as culture shock, and how to solve conflicts between teachers and students... All the knowledge and abilities I acquired here are very useful in my work.

Cui Xiao MSc Education graduate

The University of Edinburgh's Careers Service supports all current students (and graduates for up to 2 years) to develop their potential and achieve satisfying and rewarding futures.

Join in and make use of:

  • individual appointments
  • group sessions
  • wider campus-based activity
  • online services and resources

We also deliver a diverse programme of face-to-face and online events throughout the academic year.

Visit the Careers Service website


Our students

Students from all of the world join our MSc Education and go onto pursue a broad range of activities after they graduate.

Vanessa

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'Moray House staff and students have created a wonderful community and a range of events that anybody is welcome to come along to.'

Stephen

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'Embrace the culture, embrace the climate--go for a walk in the rain! Go to events, visit a pub, walk down the Royal Mile and see everything that Scotland has to offer.'

Marifatul Amalia

'The most useful thing I learned is to always challenge my own assumptions ... the lectures, workshops, and tutorial sessions here are designed so that students have to step back and think critically about the issues before formulating an argument.'

Zhou Yangyi

Yangyi Zhou, MSc Education (Philosophy of Education) 2020

'Stay hungry, stay foolish, and stay curious!'

Heidi Benjaminson

'Every single class I took could be moulded to fit around my interests, so I got what I was seeking. The flexibility to converge my area of interest with the topic of the class was, by far, the best thing about my degree.'

Fees and funding

Applicants to both part-time and full-time routes of this programme, either conditional or unconditional, will be asked to pay a deposit of £1,500 within 28 days of the offer to secure their place on the MSc Education.

Please note: If the deposit has not been received by the deadline, the application will be withdrawn without further notice. It is therefore essential that applicants have funding for their deposit in place before applying. The deposit will be offset against the tuition fee payable at the time of matriculation.

The payment details below should only be used to pay your fee deposit. The University’s Income Section will contact you near the time of the start of Semester 1 regarding the payment of the balance of your tuition fees.

Deposit Policy Guidelines

ePay Online Payment System

Use ePay to make a payment by credit/debit card (all major cards accepted). 

Please contact us if you are unable to make a payment using card: PGAOdeposits@ed.ac.uk.


Scholarship opportunities are subject to change each year. We are pleased to offer a number of School-specific scholarships, but students are encouraged to seek out opportunities from the University and external funding bodies.

More information about available scholarships and funding can be found on our Scholarships and Studentships page.

Scholarships and studentships


Contact us

Questions about the programme

For programme-specific enquiries, contact the Programme Director.

Dr Courtney Stafford-Walter

Programme Director

  • Moray House School of Education and Sport

Contact details

The MSc Education team

This programme benefits from the research and teaching expertise of a large team. As a flavour of the academic staff teaching on this programme, read the staff profiles of Programme Director and Pathway coordinators.

Dr Courtney Stafford-Walter, Programme Director

Dr Katie Cebula, Pathway Coordinator (Child and Adolescent Psychology) 

Dr Lynn McNair, Pathway Coordinator (Early Childhood Practice and Froebel) 

Dr Aline Nardo, Pathway Coordinator (Philosophy of Education)

Dr Adriana Duta, Pathway Coordinator (Research) 

Questions about your application or how to apply

For enquiries about your application or how to apply, contact the Postgraduate Admissions office.

Postgraduate Admissions Office (Education)

College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (CAHSS)

Contact details

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