Melanie Butler unveils the top ELT-related Masters in Education and English departments
British ELT postgraduate provision has strength in depth. It boasts the number one ranked centre in the QS Top Universities Education rankings: the Institute Of Education at UCL. Oxford and Cambridge both also rank in the top five. British ELT also boasts 11 programmes in the global Top 50, and 31 in the Top 200. Just over 20 percent of UK universities offer ELT-related Master’s degrees and are listed in our UK ranking
As you can see in the Global Ranking below, based on the QS findings, the UK has less competition from the US, where there are few ELT-related Masters in top schools of education, but there is more completion from Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Over the last twenty-five years, the research base for ELT seems to have expanded out of the department of Linguistics and into the schools of Education, a reflection, perhaps, of the fact that most English Language Teaching in the world takes place within mainstream education. Most postgraduate students in the field are aiming to work in state schools, colleges and universities rather than in private-sector ELT.
The ranking scores in brackets are based on the QS Top Universities Subject Rankings 2019. Please note QS only gives individual rankings on the top 50 departments globally. Other departments are grouped under the categories of: Top 100, Top 150 and Top 200. All Master’s degrees from non-UK Universities are in Tesol unless otherwise indicated. Details of all ELT-related degrees in the British Universities listed below can be found on pages 23-29.
Global ELT-related Masters in QS Top 50 Education departments*
- UCL (1)
- Oxford (4)
- Hong Kong (6)
- Toronto (7) (Language and Literacies)
- Columbia University (9)
- Nanyang Technical University Singapore (14)
- Monash (15)
- Edinburgh (21)
- KCL (22)
- Auckland (26) (Tesol, Applied Linguistics)
*Based on QS 2019 ranking (QS score in brackets).
UK ELT-related Masters in QS Top 50 Education departments*
- UCL IOE (1)
- Oxford (4)
- Edinburgh (21)
- KCL (22)
- Manchester (34)
- Birmingham (36)
- Nottingham (43)
- Bristol, Glasgow (49)
Top 100: Open University, Leeds, Southampton, Warwick
Top 150: Bath, Exeter, Leicester, Sheffield, York
Top 200: Manchester Metropolitan, Oxford Brookes, Reading
*Based on QS 2019 ranking (QS score in brackets).
UK ELT-related Masters in QS Top 50 English Departments*
- Cambridge (2)
- Birmingham (34)
- Nottingham (48)
Top 100: Cardiff
Top 150: Liverpool
Top 200: Swansea
*Based on QS 2019 ranking (QS score in brackets)
QS-ranked universities not listed here if they do not offer ELT-related masters.
