MSc Occupational Therapy (Pre-Registration)

Course facts

Award

MSc

Route

Pre-registration master’s

Length

2 years

Study modes

full-time

Campus

Northampton

Where

East Midlands, 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

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 occupational therapist in England starts on NHS band 5, which begins at £32,073 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 carry a Learning Support Fund flag for this individual course, but occupational therapist is recorded as an eligible subject and the fund covers pre-registration courses in England. Confirm your own eligibility with NHS BSA before you count on it.

• NHS Learning Support Fund (LSF) — The NHS Learning Support Fund is extra, non-repayable money for students on eligible pre-registration nursing, midwifery and allied health profession courses at universities in England. It sits on top of the ordinary student loans system rather than replacing it, so you must be eligible for both a tuition fee loan and a maintenance loan from the Student Loans Company to claim any element of it. The rules for 2026/27 are the 10th edition, published on GOV.UK.
• Undergraduate-rate student finance for pre-registration postgraduate (MSc/PGDip) courses — This is the single most misunderstood point in AHP student funding. If you take a designated pre-registration postgraduate healthcare course in England, you are funded through the undergraduate student finance system, not the Postgraduate Master's Loan, even though the award is an MSc or PGDip. That means a tuition fee loan and a maintenance loan at undergraduate rates, plus eligibility for the NHS Learning Support Fund, rather than a single combined Master's loan.
• 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 128 other approved occupational therapist courses in the UK, 111 of them in England, and 7 within East Midlands. 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.