MSc pre-registration Physiotherapy

Course facts

Award

MSc

Route

Pre-registration master’s

Study modes

full-time

Campus

Cardiff

Where

Wales, Wales

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 physiotherapist in Wales starts on NHS band 5, which begins at £32,557 in 2026/27. See the full pay picture.

Paying for it

Full-time pre-registration study in Wales 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 NHS Learning Support Fund is an England-only scheme, so it does not apply here. Wales runs its own arrangements instead.

• NHS Wales Bursary Scheme — Wales pays the full tuition fees and adds a living-costs bursary for students on commissioned healthcare courses at Welsh universities, in exchange for a binding commitment to work in NHS Wales after you qualify. The commitment is two years after a three-year course, or eighteen months after a two-year course, and walking away from it triggers a fixed repayment. You do not have to be Welsh-domiciled to take it, but you do have to study in Wales.

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

How this course compares

There are 138 other approved physiotherapist courses in the UK, 5 of them in Wales. 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.