Hello,
Our applications for 2021 are currently closed so if you are finishing your degree now, that gives you time to work for a little while, take a well earned break and then apply early when applications open. I personally worked as a teaching assistant before starting my teaching degree which gave me such valuable experience and helped me to gain some confidence in a classroom before having to teach in one! Alternatively, working as an agent would allow you to do this and gain experience in so many different types of schools and even nurseries. It is also a chance to save up some money before going back to a student budget!
If you are finishing your degree in the coming year and want to jump straight into your PGCE, that is great too. It gets you to where you want to be quicker and you are still in the mindset of academic study.
We do not offer specialisms as such. The three modules you will cover are Learning and Teaching in the Primary Curriculum, The Developing Professional and School Experience. You are able to explore the wider curriculum as well as the three core subjects in the first module which will allow you to find a specialism. Whilst it cannot be studied at university due to the volume of content that is fit into one year, you are able to explore it on your placements and take a lead on that subject in your classroom. All of our partner schools are so encouraging like this.
YSJ is a smaller university, we have under 10,000 students on our campus. This does not mean our facilities are compromised as we still have a 24 hour library (which is the only university library with a children's library within it), a gym, multiple study spaces, plenty of support teams and amazing placement team all on campus. I love studying here because everything is in one place and I do not have to travel around the city between lectures. It also makes for a real community, I've found especially with the education courses, and you always have a mutual friend with someone.
Please get booked onto our open days when they start next year! (Our last open day this year is fully booked). Until then we are running campus tours every day and would love to show you around. If you ask for an ambassador who does Primary Education, such as myself, we can show you all of the facilities tailored to us and talk about why we love education at YSJ so much. Here is the link to book onto that:
https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/open-days/campus-tours/.
Lydia