English with Foundation Year

Foundation Year

Our Foundation Year provides an excellent alternative route to Keele, providing a unique opportunity to better prepare for your chosen degree, and with guaranteed entry onto your undergraduate course once you successfully complete your Foundation Year. This extra year of study can improve your academic skills, expand your subject knowledge, give you a better understanding of higher education and, perhaps most importantly of all, build your confidence. On the Keele Foundation Year, you'll study on campus, joining our undergraduate community from the outset, with access to all the facilities and support that you'd get as an undergraduate student at Keele.

International Students

For International Students, Foundation Years are delivered through our dedicated on-campus provider, Keele University International College. Applications for International Foundation Years are also handled by KUIC; please do not apply via UCAS as the University will not be able to process your application and you may still be charged the UCAS application fee. To find out more and to apply for an International Foundation Year, visit https://kuic.keele.ac.uk/

English

Develop your skills as a writer, creative thinker and analyst of language, both literary and everyday. Delve into a diverse range of literary works from various cultures and historical periods, and discover how better to understand the world that surrounds us. Our English BA enables you to build advanced skills applicable to a huge variety of careers and take advantage of the placement opportunities embedded throughout the programme to prepare for your chosen career, benefiting from hands-on insights, work experience with skilled practitioners and collaboration with your peers. And specialise as you advance through the degree, focusing more on authors, periods, genres, and approaches that appeal to you.

Why choose this course?

• Top 5 in England for English (Guardian University Guide, 2026)

• English ranked Top 10 in England (NSS 2025, broad-based universities)*

• Develop an array of skills in interpretation, communication, and critical thinking and build your confidence as a reader, writer and critic

• Become a skilled analyst of literature of all kinds, from poetry to graphic novels to everyday language such as political speeches and marketing campaigns

• Enhance your career prospects through enriched work placement opportunities

With our English degree at Keele you will engage your imagination with texts from near and far and from the past and present, and develop your understanding of the cultures that they are part of and the ways that they reflect, generate or contradict the ideas of their time.

*We have compared the positivity ratings of all participating UK institutions using the NSS 2025 sector data to determine Keele's position relative to other broad-based universities (i.e. excluding specialist institutions and further education colleges).

About Keele

Keele University was established in 1949 by the former Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Founded to meet the needs of a changing world, Keele has always had a pioneering vision to be a different kind of university.

We excel in both teaching and research, with some of the most satisfied students in England, and research that is changing lives for the better at a regional, national and global level.

Our beautiful 600-acre campus is one of the biggest in Britain – but all the most important services and facilities are on your doorstep, with accommodation, teaching spaces, facilities including a medical centre, sports centre and pharmacy, and a range of shops, eateries and entertainment venues – including the Students’ Union – clustered around the centre.