BTEC Extended Diploma in Countryside Management Level 3

Fascinated by British wild animals, stunning trees, woodlands and fields of wildflowers? Want to learn more about them and get a job in a relevant area? This course may lead to a rewarding career in many countryside-related organisations, such as the National Parks and National Trust.

Conservation of our environment is more important than ever before with the concerns that human impact has on our world. You will carry out surveys in woodlands, rivers, ponds, peat bogs and farms, learning about our native wildlife and their habitats in much more detail than covered on the level 2 course, equipping you for a ranger job in hte future.  If you want to go into a conservation or environmental career, this course is for you.

You will learn to be responsible for maintaining the infrastructure of a country park or National Park and learn fencing, path construction and maintenance, hedge laying, gate and stile construction and pond or river maintenance.

Year one:

• principles of wildlife populations,
• ecology and conservation,
• principles of physical and biological environmental processes,
• land use and environmental issues,
• ecological concepts and application, and
• undertaking and understanding woodland management.

Year two:

• principles of plant and soil science,
• archaeology history,
• environmental interpretation,
• countryside tourism and recreation,
• farm habitat, freshwater and wetland management
• urban habitat conservation and management, and
• vertebrate pest and predator control.

The course involves a work placement. You could, for example, work as a countryside ranger volunteer at a country park, the RSPB, the National Trust or the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust where you will gain a valuable insight into what the job entails. These work placements will help raise your profile in the conservation organisations and our students have often gained work directly from these.

For both level 2 and level 3 courses we offer the opportunity for a week-long field trip. In the past we have been to Dorset, southern Ireland, Hadrian's Wall, the Lake District and Robin Hood's Bay.

Entry Requirements

• A minimum of five GCSEs grade A*-C, including English language, and maths at grade D or above, or
• a level 2 qualification at overall merit grade, English at level 2 and maths at level 1.

Entry Requirements

• A minimum of five GCSEs grade A*-C, including English language, and maths at grade D or above, or
• a level 2 qualification at overall merit grade, English at level 2 and maths at level 1.