British Teachers with PGCE are not as good as you think

A PGCE with QTS is a 12 month course you can take to receive a teaching certificate that allows you to teach in UK schools. Without this qualification you can not teach in UK schools or even International Schools due to their fake recruitment laws.

The 12 month course is actually only September to July. An academic year course of 10 months.

The actually teaching time you spend in front of children in a real live environment is only 2 school placements of 10 weeks each.

The 1st placement you will not be teaching a full teaching schedule of 20+ hours a week. Only in the 2nd placement will you be teaching a maximum of 20+ hours but only if you mentor believes you are capable.

What do you actually learn on a PGCE?

Probably the most interesting part of the PGCE is that you are required to read a lot of books about education. You will learn about Google Scholar which is a place where you can find all the research and papers people have written about education since the Victoria times.

You will need this as the essays that you have to write for your course need to have evidence of your facts that you write about. The problem is you can't just write what you want. You have to write about the topic using other peoples research and opinions. Therefore its really just a way of collating all the facts about the topic and this shows whoever grades your paper that you have read about the topic and therefore you should be knowledgable and you will probably use the skills in your teaching.

When you do actually ask your mentors or anyone else involved in your course for detailed information about teaching skills and step by step instructions on how things are done they do not exist. Like a factory has a quality standard BS5750 or and ISO standard which details everything a factory must do. In the PGCE not even Lesson Plans are standard in the UK. Nursery, Primary or Secondary schools down even have specific lesson plans. Standard Lesson plans do not exist for any topic aswell.

Writing essays on a PGCE?

The toughest part about the PGCE course is to learn how to write in an academic style. If you've not done this before on your degree course because you are an Engineer or similar technically gifted person then it's very frustrating. It's basically just a system of using the quotes of other people and putting it into a legible essay with your reasons or as they are called arguments to either support a claim or not. There is a set way of doing this, it's just a simple skill but it will affect your grade so much. If you are new to this then the experienced people look down at you because you can't do it. There are courses available but they are normally taught by librarians who are also arrogant people who think you should already know how to do this. There simple examples are useless and don't help you, only frustrate you more because you spent an hour on attending this course and you learnt nothing in that hour. You can also pay some online tutors to help you but they will just waste your time by taking it slowly so you purchase more hours to learn how to do this useless skill.

Writing Lesson Plans on a PGCE?

The lesson plan is a fundamental part of learning to teach for the PGCE. But each teacher has a different style and when you are learning to teach from different teachers this is where you will encounter confrontations and big problems in your PGCE. If you don't do what your mentor wants you to do then you are not good at taking feedback. But your are encouraged to develop your own teaching style. But you can't do this because your mentor controls you to follow his teaching style. Then if you complain and don't jump through the hoops you will become labelled a trouble teacher trainee. The mentor will then start talking shit about you in the staff room. The gossip then continues around the school about you and then this affects how others teachers treat you and help you with your PGCE.

All Universities are businesses - therefore it is there to make a profit. Why should you care about this?

Is it worth it?

What can you do with a PGCE?

What salary can you earn with a PGCE?