For the First time in Sri Lanka, a broad range of Master’s Qualifications offered by CIIHE School of Psychology in Collaboration with UK’s first change-maker University
View(s):CIIHE School of Psychology, South Asia’s leading private campus for higher education in psychology is offering a broad range of postgraduate qualifications in Clinical, Counselling, Child, Applied and Business Psychology. These programmes are offered in collaboration with University of Northampton UK. This will be the first time that this many choices are made available to students at postgraduate level by one campus in Sri Lanka.
All these qualifications are designed at Level 7 (Master’s degree level), benchmarking the Master’s degree and Clinical & Counselling Courses requirements of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) of UK. Each qualification consists of 180 UK credits according to the Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) that regulates higher education qualifications in UK. Awarding body of the qualifications is University of Northampton and CIIHE School of Psychology will be the teaching institute.
Awarding Body
University of Northampton (UON) is a public university recognized internationally and by the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka as a credible awarding body. UON is one of UK’s longest standing academic institutions, dating back to 1924 where it was launched as Northampton Technical College. After almost hundred years of growth and expansion, UON today is a leading British University with over 13 000 students supported more than 1100 staff members. The university was recently granted the Gold rating for Teaching Excellence by the TEF framework of British Government. Having received a quality standard of highest level for teaching, especially by a government rating system reflects the quality standards of the university.
Colombo International Institute of Higher Education (CIIHE) School of Psychology was known as CIRP or Colombo Institute of Research & Psychology until 2018 and is considered the largest private campus for psychology in South Asia with over 800 students studying psychology at undergraduate and postgraduate level. They have been delivering master’s level qualifications in Psychology since 2012 and so far have graduate 15 batches of students. Therefore CIIHE is one of the few institutes in the region that has the experience and expertise required to deliver masters level qualifications at international standards.
Quality Assurance
Curriculum and assessment of these postgraduate qualifications were developed by UON and they are responsible for the quality assurance of the delivery, content, assessments and marking. Students will be considered internal students of UON as well as CIIHE and the confirmation of the marks and the final award is subjected to the examination boards conducted by the UON. As a result of these stringent quality assurance by the awarding body and the expertise of the teaching institute we could expect the programme to be delivered at international standards.According to the academics of CIIHE, these qualifications were carefully selected to produce professionals in the fields of clinical, counseling, child, applied and business psychology fields based on the country’s and region’s capacity building requirements in the field of psychology. It is a well-known fact that professionals in any field of psychology with postgraduate qualifications are in demand in all parts of the world. However, the requirement in Sri Lanka and the region is much greater as very few people have qualifications in these areas. While most of them are able to practice as independent consultants, building their own practice, there are hundreds of prestigious, rewarding and satisfying jobs available in the NGO, private and government organizations. Furthermore, most countries see these qualifications as a definite plus point in migration.
These qualifications could be done either on full time or part time basis and the duration may vary based on the study option. Teachings of these programmes are delivered mainly during the weekends as many of the candidates for these are working students. Considering that the programmes are mainly aimed at skill development, except for few, most assessments are assignments.
Qualifications launched this October include MSc in Clinical & Counselling Psychology, MSc Applied Psychology and MSc in Business & Organizational Psychology. MSc Applied Psychology has three versions and students could select the most suitable programme for them based on their future career. Specializations include Child & Adolescent Practice, Counselling Psychology and General Applied Psychology.
MSc Clinical & Counselling Psychology
MSc Clinical & Counselling Psychology is a postgraduate qualification aimed at training individuals who aspire to develop a career as a Clinical Psychologist or other professional in Clinical and therapeutic psychology. This programme will provide knowledge through classroom based teaching and improve therapeutic skills through supervised training in a clinical setting. Due to the supervised training requirement this programme take two years to complete.
This is an ideal qualification that combines academic and professional skills required to function as a Clinical psychologist and/or a psychotherapist with the possibility of specializing your expertise in Mental health related to Health & Life Style modification, Mental Health promotion and prevention, Family and group therapy, counseling & rehabilitating offenders & criminals and psychological support for victims of trauma through the range of electives provided to the students.
MSc Applied Psychology in Child & Adolescent Practice
MSc Applied Psychology in Child & Adolescent Practice is a postgraduate qualification designed to train professionals qualified and skilled to function as child psychologists working with children and adolescence to provide them with counseling and therapeutic support to overcome psychological problems.
Program also provides the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills in psychological support for learning problems and psychological applications for school and community support for children, making it an excellent additional qualification for administrators, educators and managers in pre-schools and schools. Individuals working with vulnerable children and teenagers such as child protection and child care services could gain the psychological training they need to enhance their effectiveness through this programme as well.
This programme will provide knowledge through class room based teaching and improve skills essential in counseling and working with children through supervised training.
MSc Applied in Counselling Psychology
MSc Applied in Counselling Psychology is a qualification aimed at training individuals who aspire to develop a career as professionals in therapeutic psychological counseling.
This is an ideal qualification that combines academic and professional skills required to function as a psychotherapist and/ or a counseling psychologist with the possibility of specializing your expertise in Counselling related to Health & Life Style modification, Family and group therapy, counseling & rehabilitating offenders & criminals and psychological support for victims of trauma through the range of electives provided to the students.
General MSc in Applied Psychology
General MSc in Applied Psychology is a postgraduate qualification aimed at empowering individuals who aspire to develop a career in psychology related to administration and management in mental health, research and academic field, community psychology, child psychology or forensic and criminal psychology.Core modules cover essential knowledge and skills in research methods and train students on professional and ethical standards in practicing in various different fields of applied psychology. These modules would prepare you to become a professional with the up to date international standards in research rigor in terms of conducting research as well as using research data for their applications. A thorough knowledge in research is a must if you plan to work as a professional in mental health promotion, advocacy, policy making, administration and coordination of mental health or to become an academic who would go on to joining a university to become a lecturer or a researcher.
This programme offers a range of electives that allows the students to specialize their knowledge in selected areas that they wish to become an expert. By selecting the most suitable electives you could sub-specialize your masters in either mental health promotion, working with children and teenagers, working with offenders and rehabilitation of criminals or individuals who are traumatized by natural or man-made disasters. Psychometric module is especially included to provide you with skills to conduct testing and assessments that would be a very useful tool in any field of psychology.
MSc in Business & Organizational Psychology
For more information on Business & Organizational Psychology please refer to the article we have published in the Financial times section.
Applications are open for all these programmes and registrations are taking place at the moment. We advise the individuals interested to apply at their earliest as the positions are likely to be filled soon as these are long awaited programmes. Also in order to maintain the quality of the supervised training only a certain number of individuals could be allocated for a particular cohort.
Entry Qualifications for these programmes vary from one to another. You could obtain more information by contacting the student counsellors. Each student is selected based on the entry criteria and the outcome of a face to face interview that evaluates language proficiency and students ability to study at postgraduate level.
In order to get a clear idea about the most suitable programme for you and the other details, it is highly recommended that you make an appointment with them and meet an academic or the programme coordinator instead of trying to obtain information via telephone. You could reserve an appointment by calling a student counselor on 0112 507071 or 72 or by texting your details to 0703 41 8001 or you could walk in to CIIHE campus admissions office at No. 230, Galle Road, Colombo 04.