PGCE- UCL or Brighton

Hello everyone!

I have a conditional offer from UCL for PGCE Primary and an unconditional offer from Brighton. As per the UCAS deadline, I need to reply to my offers latest by 23rd Feb 21.

As per my conditional offer from UCL, I need to sit for an English proficiency exam and GCSE English (I am a international student from India). Even though I have A2 in English in my A and O levels, I still don't meet the UCL requirement.

Now, I cant decide if I should risk it and accept the offer from UCL and sit for both the English exams. Clearing English proficiency test will not be difficult as its very general however, I am not very sure about GCSE English. or should I simply accept the offer from Brighton?

Also, I fail to understand as to how all the universities have accepted my degree from India whereas its only UCL that wants me to give GCSE English.

Hi S Fatima

If you are unsure about the GCSE English and worried, then if you like Brighton, accept that offer and it eliminates the worry for you.
I'm guessing you are favouring UCL however, as you wouldn't be thinking of doing the exams otherwise?

Hope this helps
Dan

I don't know about PGCE, but does Brighton have similar requirements for GCSE? If yes, it seems rather unfair that one university would accept your degrees and another wouldn't (especially since GCSE requirements are probably more of box ticking exercise for most universities). You could always offer them to have your degrees "aconowledged" by a third party (there're companies who do that), to prove that your degrees and grades are equivalent to the GCSE.

If anything, I would definitely email UCL about this and explain your situation.

Hey

So out of the three universities that I applied to.. it’s only UCL that is asking me to sit for GCSE.
I did tell them that I have a masters from UK and my entire education has been in English but they still want me to sit for the English exam. Reason being that they don’t consider India as an English speaking country.

Also, they informed me very late about these requirements because of which I don’t have enough time to send my degree to a third party for the acknowledgment.

But do the other unis you applied to not have a similar requirement or did they indeed accept your degrees? If it's the latter, then I think you can always point that out and hope there's a reasonable person at the other end of your email conversation. If it's the former, then I'd still ask if an external verficiation was possible and whether they would accept that as proof (even if you needed some extra time to organise this). In Scotland all teacher training courses have similar requirements and I found that some universities use external services to determine degree equivalence and others use some internal service. But I definitely wouldn't give up on a technicality. If they really don't let you in because of this, then ... well, it's their loss.

I had a similar problem, because I'm not British and my school degrees are foreign. They still wanted to see the equivalent of an A-Level in English, despite the fact that my command of English - as a non-native speaker - is obviously much better now than it was 15 years ago in secondary school. This is basically just an exercise in bureaucratic box-ticking and fulfills no inherent purpose...


Edit: Btw., if you have a degree from an English-speaking country, should they not waive at least the separate English proficiency exam (I suppose you're talking about Ibt/toefl etc.

For Pgce primary, grade C in GCSE English, maths and science is the minimum requirement. In India we don’t particularly have GCSE Exams however it is equivalent to grade 10th results.
When I had sent it my application to Brighton.. they asked me to send my grade 12th English marks since they don’t consider grade 10th result. Same was the case with Manchester.
Keeping this in mind I mailed my grade 12th English marks to UCL but they seem to be very rigid about not accepting it since I am from a non English speaking country.

Does it really matter where I do my PGCE from?