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Warning about PGCE (PCET)

I guess I’m writing this more as a warning than a question in the hope than anyone researching my course before applying or accepting an offer will see this.

When applications for Initial Teacher Training opened in 2017, I applied to do a PGCE in post-compulsory education and training (PCET) at the University of Sunderland. I wanted to do a Secondary PGCE, preferably school direct, in social sciences, but the year I applied, there was nothing in my region and my only option to train to teach politics was the PGCE (PCET).

My issues on the course surrounded placements, but there were issues related to deadline structure and students being misled about MA credits counting towards an Education MA.
Apparently every year there is one or two subjects that are difficult to place, in my year, it seemed to be the academic subjects mainly, especially A Level History and Politics.

The uni didn’t organise placements until after students had started in September and the deadline the uni set for all students being on placement was the end of November, with students being expected to teach 5-6 hours a week over two days on placement (two days at uni and a weekday to plan and complete assignments). 7 on-placement observations were required (3 by the uni, 4 by placement staff), only beginning after 30 hours had been completed.

I didn’t start my placement until after February half term and was only teaching 3 hours a week (sometimes more, sometimes less). This wasn’t enough to complete the 100 hours required to qualify, so the uni found me a second placement at a training provider. The training provider didn’t teach any academic subjects (apart from maths and English GCSE re-sits), just NVQ Level 1s and 2s, nothing I had ever even studied before (apart from the re-sits), so far from being a suitable placement for me. I ended up acting as a TA in a Digital Marketing class and taught a further 3 hours on my own for the purposes of observations, but lessons that were entirely unrelated to their course. I did really enjoy the experience, but it didn’t give me the experience I needed.

By the end of my course, I had completed 108 hours practical teaching, but 29 of those were solo whole class teaching, 2 were 1:1 and the rest we so-called “team teach”, that were just me acting as a TA (checking spelling, ensuring they were on task etc). To add to that, 4 of my placement observations were done before I had completed 30 hours and all were done before I had completed 30 class teaching hours.

On the last day of uni, I submitted a formal complaint, with logs of hours (which showed how my hours were spent) and timeline of everything that had happened. I tried to get jobs, but was not having much luck, I even applied for an entry level youth work job, but was told I did not have enough experience (3 months of an afternoon a week and 6 weeks 4 days a week isn’t much). I attended a meeting with the head of the school of education, who at that point was not taking me seriously in the slightest. She told me that no teacher is the finished article when they complete their ITT, but I couldn’t get any job to gain further experience. I couldn’t take on unpaid work experience, I was getting £80 a month Universal Credit, I needed a paid job. She suggested I look at supply work, so I did. I was told by multiple supply agencies that there isn’t much work in FE, ordinary secondary schools wouldn’t take a supply teacher with QTS/QTLS and although academies can, they prefer not to and wouldn’t take any supply teacher who’s subject specialism wasn’t what they were teaching, so I couldn’t teach secondary humanities on supply to gain experience. It left me completely stuck. I kept applying for support jobs in schools and colleges, even got some interviews, but always lost out to others who had more experience, even though I was academically overqualified - the experience counted more than the piece of paper that said PGCE.

In the meantime, I told the investigator at the uni that I wanted to take the complaint forward. My initial complaint was so thorough I didn’t have to give a statement, I just had to have a phone conversation to answer a few questions and clarify some things, and I waited while he investigated my case and spoke to everyone involved.

I received around £1,900 compensation from the uni. I had hoped for more since my PGCE is completely useless, but at least it replenished my own savings I had put towards the year and helped me out while I was looking for a job.

I am not the only case. Another student had a subject specialism of fine art and was placed in social science/law/humanities study skills, helping with essays when she hadn’t written an essay in years before her PGCE. She ended up doing a proper placement in her subject over the summer holidays. Another student, who is also in the process of a complaint, didn’t get any whole class teaching experience at all and also can’t find a job.

For some students, the course worked out very well, they got exactly what they wanted out of it and found jobs, but they were the ones on placements doing a good amount of teaching. Unless you know you can get a placement (an old college perhaps with a high number of students in your subject), I’d stay well away. I wish I’d done an MA instead. I got a job eventually, but it’s in research, nothing to do with education, so I have entirely wasted a year of my life and taken on even more student debt for no reason.