[frank the tank]

My wife was thinking of applying for her PGCE training at an English University. Only problem is that we live in Belfast and have a young family, so there are not many options.

Does anyone know of any Universities that will allow her to do lectures at the University, but do her placements back home in Belfast?

I spoke to a lady from the GTTR who said that there are a few universities that allow this, but doesn't know any names.

Any advice/answers will be appreciated.

Frankie.

[oxymoronic]

(Original post by frank the tank)
My wife was thinking of applying for her PGCE training at an English University. Only problem is that we live in Belfast and have a young family, so there are not many options.

Does anyone know of any Universities that will allow her to do lectures at the University, but do her placements back home in Belfast?

I spoke to a lady from the GTTR who said that there are a few universities that allow this, but doesn't know any names.

Any advice/answers will be appreciated.

Frankie.

Hi,

I would hazard a guess that if there are universities who do let people do this that they would around Liverpool and also north Wales as these are the universities who train a lot of Northern Irish teachers. However, I imagine this would be difficult to arrange on a practical level as the university tutors have to visit trainees on placement and its unlikely that there would be a budget for travel to Northern Ireland. Similarly, some universities have students do 4 days in school and 1 day in uni, so this would be quite impractical for her to come over to the university once a week.

If she's considering doing a secondary PGCE, has she looked into the Open University? They allow you to do the uni part of the PGCE as distance learning and then arrange your school based placements yourself. This would be the best option if she does want to do secondary, in my opinion as then she can do the entire thing locally. I know teachers who qualified this way and they said that there are a couple of face to face weekend long sessions where you meet with the tutors and other people doing the PGCE which seems quite good.

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergr...pgce/index.htm

Other universities (Northumbria, Edge Hill and Cumbria) have a distance learning/flexi PGCE options but I don't know too much about it, so you'd need to contact them to see if the placements can be done anywhere in the UK. I think at some universities you can do the lectures bit as distance learning but you still have to go to a partner school to do your placements.

[Kaiser_7]

Maybe I'm missing a trick, but can't she just apply to Queens?

[balloon_parade]

(Original post by frank the tank)
My wife was thinking of applying for her PGCE training at an English University. Only problem is that we live in Belfast and have a young family, so there are not many options.

Does anyone know of any Universities that will allow her to do lectures at the University, but do her placements back home in Belfast?

I spoke to a lady from the GTTR who said that there are a few universities that allow this, but doesn't know any names.

Any advice/answers will be appreciated.

Frankie.

The University of Cumbria do a distance learning PGCE- perhaps have a look at this? As I know lots of people on the full time PGCE did their extending placements there.

[oxymoronic]

(Original post by Kaiser_7)
Maybe I'm missing a trick, but can't she just apply to Queens?

I would imagine the issue is that there's only 2 training providers for the whole of Northern Ireland meaning it's much harder to get a place on a course than it is in England where there's loads of universities. It's the same in Scotland as there's only 7 providers (only 5 do primary) so a lot people from Northern Ireland/Scotland end up going to England to train because if you miss out on a place at your first choice your second choice will be closed/have no spaces, so then you either have to wait a year or reapply in England where it's "easier" to get a place simply because there's more providers. This is what I had to do as luckily I was in a position where I could uproot and move but other people can't do this as easily. The university I did my PGCE at had about 20% of its intake (for primary) from Scotland and Northern Ireland because it was close to a big cheap airline hub so it meant we could all get back home easily.

[Ooogie]

^^ That is exactly true.

I am wanting to finally do my Primary PGCE, however I too live in Belfast and have in the past year just got a mortgage. I done my BADegree at Queens, and would love to go back however they only offer Secondary PGCE's.
St Mary's College only offer Irish Medium primary - they require you to actually speak the language, which I don't.
The only option I have is to go to Ulsters Coleraine campus. However, they don't offer part-time, only full-time courses. Thus I wold have to give up my job to commute, and thus struggle with my home and bills. It's a bit of a pain that there are not more options available here but alas, that is life :| ....