York St John PGCE

Hi, I am planning on doing lower primary PGCE at YSJ, just wondering if anyone has advice or info about the course? What to expect?

Anything is welcome! Thank you :smile:

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YSJ_Ben

Original post

by ihatenglish

Hi, I am planning on doing lower primary PGCE at YSJ, just wondering if anyone has advice or info about the course? What to expect?
Anything is welcome! Thank you :smile:

Hi ihatenglish!

So whilst I don't have any personal experience with lower primary PGCE, I did do a lot of digging into secondary when I was applying, and from what I surmised it was somewhat similar with course structure. Once completed, you will graduate with QTS and the PGCE, making you fully qualified to teach as soon as you're done with the course. As it's a postgraduate course, it will run September-September, as opposed to the usual September-May/June that you'll be familiar with from undergraduate studies.

When studying at YSJ for a PGCE, you can expect your first few months before Christmas to very much be university-based, planning lessons, and reaffirming subject knowledge. That's not to say that you won't be in schools much... you will.. a LOT. Placements tend to be based with the university's trust, so for Primary education we have a variety of schools we work with, some as far as Middlesbrough. It tends to be that you'll not be placed at a school that's unreasonable to get to, but the academics take into account your term-time living address when allocating you your placement schools. It may be you car share with someone else on the course, for example, and will never usually travel to a school farther than 90-120 minutes away. As the semesters continue, you'll change schools to provide a wider variety of experience and to help you develop your skills for adapting to new environments.

So as said, semester 1 is typically a bit more university-based, at least to start with. You'll end up being in schools a lot each week by Christmas time, usually at least 3 days. By Christmas you'll have taught a handful of lessons, and come the time after Christmas you'll build up to teaching almost full-time, meaning you'll be teaching on every day of placement when you get towards the end of the course. There's still time in university each week, with some variation having you in uni for a week or two at a time, in between placements and around assignments. You'll have an academic tutor to liaise with and discuss assignments and placements with, as well as to offer support in any way that they can. You'll be well supported, and the team are all lovely having met and discussed a good number of them myself on open days and through work.

As for advice, I'd say to research around what may be expected at interview. Typically you'll be given some questions to answer or something to prepare, so do what you can to the best of your ability and consider other aspects to expand into that set you aside from other candidates. Consider different teaching strategies too, as these are always helpful to bring up during interview and how you would handle a particular situation.

I hope this helps, and wishing you the absolute best for the future!

Ben 🙂

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