After you have completed your A-Levels or similar qualifications to get into university, you may be wondering how different university is to school. You would have finally completed your primary and secondary education, which is classed as full time. When you start college or sixth form, you definitely spend less hours in the classroom with a teacher. Many students wonder whether university will be any different. University may seem as if you get more free time and even less hours spent in the classroom. However, you may not know if it is still classed as full time education or not.
The simple answer is that university does class as full time education. For education to be full time, you need to be studying for 12 or more hours a week. At university, you are likely to be studying for around 32-36 hours a week during a full time course. Therefore, you will not have time to work in a full-time job, so your education is classed as full time.
If you want to find out more about what classes as full time education, carry on reading to learn more about the terms full time and part time education and what they actually mean.
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What counts as full time education in the UK?
Full time education refers to a person studying for at least twelve hours a week or more. This studying can involve examinations, practical work, supervised tuition and much more. The full definition can be found on the Law Insider website, if you click here.
Due to this, if studying full time at university, it meets these criteria and so is classed as full time education. Therefore, primary and secondary school is classed as full time education and even home schooling can be. Check out this article from Think Student to discover how many hours is classed as full time education.
Due to university courses being classed as full time education, you need to make sure that you are showing up to lessons! Check out this article from Think Student to discover why attendance is important.
What counts as part time education in the UK?
You will be referred to as a part time student if you are not attending a full-time course. This normally requires you to study 12 hours or less per week. For more on this, please refer to this article from Think Student.
Part time education is normally extremely flexible, meaning you can spread out your hours throughout the week.
If you take a part time course at university, you will leave with the same qualifications you would achieve from a full time course. However, it will just take you longer to achieve this because you will spend less time studying each week.
Part time courses are definitely useful if you have family commitments or are also employed in a job which you would lose if you were in education full time.
Does the Open University count as full time education?
The Open University is a type of university which allows students to study in a flexible way at its institution or online. Any student is allowed to study there, regardless of their circumstances.
More information about the Open University can be found on this article from Think Student, if you want to learn more about it.
The Open University is very flexible in the type of education it offers. It offers full time study, which involves studying around 32 to 36 hours a week. This equates to 120 credits per year.
This university also offers part time courses. If you study these types of courses, you are likely to be expected to study for 16-18 hours per week. More information about this can be found on the Open University website, if you click here.
How do you know whether to do part time or full time education?
Going into advanced education involves many difficult decisions. For example, you need to know what you want to study for a start!
When deciding whether to be a part time or full time student, there are many factors which you need to take into account. For example, you need to be aware of how much time you have to dedicate to study.
If you can’t dedicate enough time for hours of rigorous study a week, then a full time course probably isn’t the right way for you to go.
Studying full time also means that you need to be organised and able to handle a lot of work. Check out the Foundation Education website to find out more information about the skills needed for full and part time education if you click here.
Hopefully this article has outlined the meaning of full time education to you and whether this term can be applied to university. Remember that being at university requires the same effort and maybe even more than further education, such as A-Levels, which you can learn more about in this Think Student article.
Being at university definitely requires you to complete an immense amount of work and this can be difficult. However, this is only one difficulty out of many which you may come across.
Check out this article from Think Student to discover how to deal with the transition from secondary school to university.