About the Course

The PGCE Primary 3-7 (QTS) course is designed to support you to develop as a quality driven practitioner who is aware of the impact a good early education can have on the lives of the children you teach, and help you become an ambassador for young children and their families. It is a demanding, but extremely rewarding course of professional education and training.

Initial Professional Development (IPD): This element of the programme covers general aspects of becoming a teacher. It is largely lecture-based, supported by discussion-based seminars with an assigned professional tutor. You will study across a number of key educational practice areas within your IPD seminars in which you will explore the fundamental principles and research around which teaching and learning is based. You will explore and engage with key professional bodies, policy, theory, research and practice in a number of areas such as curriculum, effective teaching, behaviour, adaptive teaching and pedagogy. This will be bespoke to your chosen age range but also applicable across the Primary age ranges as, crucially, you also receive training across the National Curriculum areas in core and foundation subjects; English, Mathematics, Science, ICT, History, Geography, Art, Music, PE, RE, DT, PSHE and MfL.

In Prime and Specific seminars you will consider wide ranging theory, pedagogy and policy underlying early education provision. This will include in depth exploration of the Early Years Foundation Stage areas of learning, including the Prime Areas; Communication and Language, Physical Development, Personal, Social and Emotional Development and the Specific Areas; Literacy, Mathematics, Expressive Arts and Design and Understanding the World. You will consider how a carefully crafted, safe environment can be used to support children’s learning and development, help them become independent and challenge their thinking whilst also nurturing their creativity and wellbeing. You will have opportunities to work with expert practitioners in school, and through lectures and workshops and make concrete connections between theory and practice. You will also be given the opportunity to reflect on your own philosophy and ethos as a teacher.

Approximately half of the course is spent in schools, where your training continues and you are given opportunities to develop and extend your skills, build your confidence and of course your experience. In order to help you make connections between theory and practice, your PGCE year includes Intensive Training and Practice (ITaP) weeks. During these weeks you will work in a blended approach of days in University, and days in school where you can focus on key areas of the curriculum such as early reading and phonics and maths as well as approaches to adaptive teaching.

As part of the course, you are expected to engage on a variety of levels with the course content and materials. Many of the sessions require active participation in early years approaches to teaching. You will also be expected to have some familiarity with accessing library and online resources to support your research into different aspects of Early Years education in preparation for the completion of assignments. Exceptional levels of engagement and attendance are a must for this course.

Formal assessment of the course takes place through observations of your teaching, profile points with tutors to discuss progress and targets and your successful completion of assignments based on assessment and curriculum development. Linking theory and practice is a key feature of the course and you undertake a number of curriculum and wider professional based tasks whilst in school under the support of expert school based practitioners.