Music - Jazz (Professional Placement Year)
UCAS Code: W344
Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) - BA (Hons)
Entry requirements
A level
Grades CCC including Music Grade C or related subject.
Access to HE Diploma
Typical offers for applicants with Access to HE will be the Access to HE Diploma or Access to HE Certificate (60 credits, 45 of which must be Level 3, including 30 at merit or higher) accepted in addition to evidence of Music ability and/or other graded Music qualifications.
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme
A minimum of 26 points required in addition to evidence of Music ability and/or other graded Music qualifications.
Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)
Extended Diploma in Music or related subject accepted at grade Merit, Merit, Merit (MMM) accepted.
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About this course
As a Jazz student at Bath Spa University, you'll be part of an established Music department with a long history of working with world class musicians and composers.
The focus of the course is to prepare you as an improvising musician for a career in the jazz music industry. This is achieved by delivering a dynamic and practical curriculum tailored to your individual strengths and interests.
You'll explore performance, improvisation, composition, music production, education and marketing. Instrumental/vocal tuition and the performance experience are at the heart of the course, offering you a focused learning experience guided by a team of professional lecturers and tutors who are all working jazz musicians.
**More about the Professional Placement Year**
A Professional Placement Year (PPY), traditionally known as a sandwich year, is where a student undertakes a period of work with an external organisation for between 9-13 months. The placement occurs between the students' second and third years of undergraduate study. Students can engage in up to 3 placements to make up the total time and are required to source the placement(s) themselves with support from the Careers and Employability Team.
Tuition fees
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The Uni
Bath Spa University
School of Music and Performing Arts

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See your living costsWhat students say
We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.
How do students rate their degree experience?
The stats below relate to the general subject area/s at this university, not this specific course. We show this where there isn’t enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Music
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
After graduation
The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Music
What are graduates doing after six months?
This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.
Top job areas of graduates
What do graduate employment figures really tell you?Music is a popular degree subject and a little over 4,600 degrees were awarded to UK graduates in 2015. Most were working after six months — but postgraduate study (usually continuing with music) is quite common and a lot of graduates go into music teaching, often as freelance or travelling music teachers of particular instruments. Obviously, many music graduates get work as musicians as well, or work as sound recordists and in similar technical roles. Music is important in advertising and so a lot of graduates go into this industry, and management is also a popular job role for music graduates. There's also a niche for music graduates wanting to work in IT and computing, particularly with web applications. Because a lot of musician work is temporary or freelance, the most common way for new graduates to get jobs as musicians is through their own contacts, so learning how to make good use of networks and contacts might help in your career.
What about your long term prospects?
Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.
Jazz
The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.
£14k
£18k
£20k
Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.
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Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF):
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This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).
You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.
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Post-six month graduation stats:
This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.
It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.
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Graduate field commentary:
The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show
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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?
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