Accounting and Finance with a Foundation Year

Birmingham City University

Our BSc (Hons) Accounting and Finance with Foundation Year provides a supportive and accessible route into higher education. It is particularly suited to students returning to education, changing career direction, or seeking to build confidence before beginning undergraduate study. The Foundation Year equips you with a strong grounding in core business and financial principles, alongside the academic and professional skills needed for success at degree level. Through the exploration of contemporary topics such as sustainability and ethical decision-making, students gain an understanding of both the technical and real-world applications of accounting and finance within a global context. Teaching is delivered through a blended learning approach that includes lectures, interactive workshops, field trips, and online study. This flexible structure supports a range of learning styles while encouraging critical thinking, problem-solving, and independent learning – key attributes for both academic progression and future employment. Delivery of the course is flexible and includes a blend of lectures, workshops, field trips and online learning. The modules, which feed into the course are broad and cover key current topics, such as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and help you to appreciate accounting and finance from a range of perspectives. Ultimately, decision making in this field, calls for one to exercise judgement and intuition and this course helps you to strengthen that judgement. On successful completion of the Foundation Year, you will progress onto the three-year undergraduate BSc (Hons) Accounting and Finance degree, where you will further develop your ability to analyse financial information, apply practical knowledge, and exercise professional judgement in complex business environments. The degree course you move on to is designed with your future career in mind and offers opportunities to gain exemptions from professional examinations with leading accounting bodies such as Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. This provides you with an invaluable head start towards achieving professional qualifications. Overall, this programme offers more than a pathway into a degree, it provides the knowledge, skills, and confidence needed to succeed in higher education and pursue a career in accounting and finance.

The foundation year is designed to give you the opportunity to develop your academic and interpersonal skills while developing your subject knowledge further to support you to success on your academic path. By studying a foundation year, your first year will be spent learning a wide range of broad subject areas which then open up opportunities for you to specialise further in your next year – which would be the first year of a full degree programme.