This short course will introduce you to key ideas in sociology and psychology. It will focus on how these disciplines help us to understand differences in areas such educational achievement and health outcomes.
Level
Level 2
Fees
If your annual income is less than £32,000 this course could be FREE to you. Take a look at our fees page here.
Class Times
Please note that the class times for this course are slightly different to our usual times:
Wednesday 9th July – 10.00am – 5.00pm
Thursday 10th July – 9.00am – 5.00pm
Friday 10th July – 9.00am – 4.00pm
About the Course
This course is relevant to you if you have applied for one of our Access to Higher Education diplomas or you wish to apply for our Academic and Career Skills Programme starting in January 2026. However, it is open to anyone who is interested in finding out more about sociology and psychology.
This course is also for anyone interested in a career in education, health, social, community and public sectors or further study in social sciences.
Together we will consider why some people achieve more in education than others, why some people live healthier lives, and how systems like healthcare, education and criminal justice reflect wider inequalities. Through interactive discussion, individual and group tasks we will explore basic sociological and psychological theories to help us to understand how issues such as social class, gender, ethnicity and environment influence health and life chances.
During this course we will explore familiar topics about everyday life like money, race, gender, individual behaviours and lifestyle, where you live and how all of this can affect outcomes such as school results, and staying healthy.
You will learn about what psychologists and sociologists have found out by studying people and society and how their ideas help us to explain what’s going on.
We will consider some of this through representation in film clips and music.
This course is a lovely introduction that can lead onto other short courses in related topic areas such as The Power and Psychology of Positivity, Introduction to Criminology and longer courses, including our Access to Higher Education diplomas that can ultimately allow access to higher education and university.
This course will help you:
- To understand key terms and approaches in social science
- To explore psychological and sociological approaches to criminal behaviour.
- To understand different social science approaches to systems such as healthcare and education.
- To understand how factors like class, gender, ethnicity, and lifestyle affect health.
- To identify inequalities in health and access to care.
- To apply social science concepts to real-life examples.
Entry Requirements
You must be working at Level 1, or above.
