PGCE at Huddersfield University

This the kind of thing I’m really worrying about when I start my PGCE next year… I’ve heard a lot of nightmare stories about PGCE placements.

I’m sorry this happened to you, OP, but thank you for sharing. Hopefully, you’re in a more positive place now and that your your career is going well.

I just wanted to come on here to share my experience as a PGCE student at Huddersfield University and the challenges I faced here. I decided to have a career change to teach primary after many years of working in government and private sector settings. Getting a place on the course as a mature student wasn't too difficult and interview was fine. Even the teaching in-house was fine though I felt alot of the lectures were unnecessarily long (2-3 hrs) to possibly help the lecturers tot up their teaching hours.

I had 3 different placements and boy the first two were awful.Given my third placement was amazing and restored my belief in myself to be a good teacher, prior to that the first two were a nightmare. I was seriously depressed and crying all the time thinking I wasn't cut out for teaching, my mentors were so negative and never happy though I worked myself to the ground and all hours,functioning on 4 hours of sleep to get things perfect (juggling a sick family at the same time). One of my mentors was so nasty and condescending with her class and her behaviour towards the children was pretty passive aggressive. In the other school, I faced a couple of racist incidents,one of which a child was the subject of. When I raised concerns to my academic tutors,it was like I was the baddie and what it came down to is that unis struggle to keep schools on board for training so won't upset long term relations for their students who are there only for a shortwhile. My mental health was so damaged during this course and I still have PTSD from how bad it all was. Thankfully my last placement restored my faith and I managed to pass,my mentor was amazing truly and even stood up to uni who wanted me to stay longer to do another term, though I refused and showed i was more than capable under my new mentor.

Given that I'm not a fresh young student out of uni and I have work experience for over 15 years, some of it in some scary set ups,what I faced in these schools was some next level cattiness and I later learned that a number of other students had struggled with the same schools but uni refused to ruin their relationship to support their students...I find that shocking and disturbing as they harp on about supporting students but I saw very little of that.

Not to be completely critical though, my academic tutor tried her best to keep everyone sweet but should have tried harder,as I left that course completely messed up..it knocked my confidence so bad and I pray no one else goes through this...too many bad things happened that I can't write as I will go on forever but I do wish I had saved my 10K and done something that would have been more beneficial than going through this trauma. Many students did have a positive experience its not everyone's story I know quite a few of us went through this and we all felt uni let us down big time.

Hi there, im wanting to transfer to Huddersfield uni to do primary teaching in second year? Do you know anything about how that course is and how the placements are? I'm currently at leeds trinity in first year the course is great tutors nice met my best friend. Though the travel is too long up to 3 hours one way and I hate that the uni is in the countryside feels very boring and the societies are boring too. I have unexplainable anxiety while I'm specificially there and the tutor said I should visit counselling service which was nice. Everyone there even those I become friendly with revolve the uni experience around the work we have to do. That's why I find it so boring. Just wanted to know what you think and your perspective on this. Thanks.