MA Music Therapy

Course facts

Award

MA

Route

Pre-registration master’s

Length

3 years

Study modes

part-time

Starts

September

Campus

Bristol

Where

South West, England

Regulator

HCPC — approved

Everything above is taken from the published record for this programme. Rows that are absent are absent from the source data, not omitted for brevity.

Entry requirements

Notes

UWE recommends a good undergraduate degree with professional music skills, a high level of practical performance in any musical tradition with an interest in live improvisation, the ability to provide harmonic support, and experience of working in health or education settings including voluntary work.

This is the typical offer, which is the level the university publishes as its normal requirement — not a guaranteed threshold and not a maximum. Offers move with demand, and a strong application with relevant care experience is treated differently from a bare set of grades. Almost every provider also requires an enhanced criminal-records check and occupational health clearance before you can go on placement, and many interview.

Outcomes

Where the national surveys publish figures for this course, they appear here. Small cohorts are routinely suppressed in the official releases, which is why a tile can read "not published" for a course that is running perfectly well.

Outcome figures are worth less on this kind of course than on most. Pre-registration programmes feed a regulated profession with a national pay scale, so a graduate from any approved course starts on the same band as a graduate from any other. Earnings differences between providers mostly reflect where graduates end up living and whether they take NHS or private work, not the quality of the teaching. As a reference point, a newly qualified music therapist in England starts on NHS band 6, which begins at £39,959 in 2026/27. See the full pay picture.

Paying for it

Full-time pre-registration study in England is normally funded through a tuition fee loan and a maintenance loan from the student finance body for the nation you study in, topped up by whatever health-specific support that nation runs. Allied health students are treated more generously than most because placements make part-time work hard to sustain.

The dataset does not record whether this course qualifies for the NHS Learning Support Fund. Check the fund's own eligibility list rather than assuming either way.

• Postgraduate Master's Loan (England) — The Postgraduate Master's Loan is a single contribution towards fees and living costs for a standalone master's degree, paid direct to the student. It is deliberately not the route for most pre-registration AHP master's courses in England: GOV.UK excludes anyone starting a full-time postgraduate pre-registration healthcare course on or after 1 August 2018. It matters mainly for AHP master's courses that sit outside the designated pre-registration list.

All funding and bursaries · rules change every academic year, so check the current terms before you apply.

How this course compares

There are 7 other approved music therapist courses in the UK, 5 of them in England. Because every one of them leads to the same registration, the differences that actually matter are practical: how long the course runs, whether the award is a bachelor's or a master's, where the placements are and what the university asks for at entry.