PGCE Preparation - Assignments and Grading

It is up to the the individual course providers to decide how they want to run their course so PGCEs do not follow a set structure. Typically, they are not graded. You either pass or fail. You are likely to be graded following each placement, though. At my university, we were graded from 1-5 against each teaching standard and needed to have achieved 3s with some 2s during the final placement in order to pass the course. I know some other course providers assign Ofsted-style grades like 'outstanding', 'good' and 'requires improvement' instead. At the end of the course, your course provider might then use these grades to assign you a final grade, which gives you an indication of how well you did overall. This grade is very unlikely to appear on your certificate and, in my experience, schools are not particularly interested in these grades either, so generally they really are just provided for your own benefit.

Assignments will differ greatly between courses. At my university, we had two formal 5,000 word assignments due in on the first day back after Christmas and Easter. The first was based on observations we made of specific children during the first placement, the second was a report based on investigations we conducted during the second placement i.e. implementing some sort of change in the classroom to see if it improves an element of teaching. Your assignments may or may not involve similar things, but as your PGCE has a SEN focus, they certainly will be more heavily focused on SEN than mine were.