If you already have a foundation degree or HND in Public Service, our Top-Up course is for you.

Created with public service employers, our one-year degree gives you the chance to advance your understanding in specialist areas such as youth justice and psychology, and find out what drives policy in the UK’s public services today.

It’s a hands-on course with plenty of opportunities to learn through study trips, simulated training sessions, and visits from public service professionals.

With a focus on issues such as public services policy, youth justice and politics, our top-up degree will further your academic knowledge and work-based skills.

Thanks to our links with fire and ambulance services, the police, the Prison Service, HM Revenue & Customs and the Armed Forces, you’ll benefit from course content that aligns closely with current professional practice – delivered by lecturers who have first-hand experience of working in the sector.

But you won’t just learn in the classroom. You might go on a trip to Berlin and tour a Stasi prison, roleplay as a casualty in simulated mass emergency situations for London Fire Brigade, take part in Public Order policing training, or go on a teambuilding trip to the Lake District involving activities such as kayaking, ghyll-scrambling and abseiling.

Throughout our BA (Hons) Public Service Top-Up course there’s a focus on your future career. The Major Project module gives you the chance to explore your chosen area of public service and find out where your degree could take you after graduation.

The public services sector employs around five million people in the UK (Office for National Statistics, 2019), in a huge range of roles. You might find yourself working on the front line, or taking up a valuable role in analysis, research or management.

Our Public Service students have gone on to work with uniformed services such as the police, the fire service, the Prison Service and all branches of the military, as well as in HM Revenue & Customs, and primary, further or higher education.

Whichever path you follow, you can be sure you’ll graduate with the knowledge, skills and abilities that employers need. They help us review what we teach and how we teach it, and they come on to campus to support your learning.