Primary Education with Specialism in SEN with QTS

Although this one-year PGCE course offers you a valuable academic qualification, one of its major attractions is the fact that you will spend two-thirds of your time –120 days – working in schools and gaining valuable real-life experience.

You’ll work towards your qualification by attending workshops and group discussions, but this course is essentially very practical and hands-on.

This is a full-time, one-year course, which will train you to teach young people between the ages of five and 11. All trainees learn to teach across the range of subjects in the Primary National Curriculum, but there is a strong focus on SEN. 

Approximately two thirds of this well-structured, supervised programme includes blocked time in schools/settings where you will gain direct teaching experience and work with experienced practitioners in the classroom. School based sessions are undertaken predominately in West Midland primary schools. Placements will include schools recognised for their strengths in SEN or a special school.

Teaching is graded as pass or fail and by the end of the second practice trainees will have gained experience of teaching approximately 80 per cent of the timetable in a supportive and guided context.

Note that all PGCE with QTS courses commence teaching in the first week of September.

Lead school partners

The lead school partner approach enables multi-academy trusts, or groups of schools, to offer teacher education courses offered in collaboration with a university partner. You may prefer to apply to a lead school partner if, for example, the range of schools where you could be placed for your teaching practice, better suits your circumstances. You spend the same amount of time on school placements and will study on campus with us for most if not all your taught sessions. You will also have the same access to a personal development tutor and all the resources we offer.

Our lead school partners for PGCE Primary courses are (see links for details such as location maps and contact details):

• Teach Central
• Lozells (Holte)

Placement locations

Our students are asked to complete some forms for placements around whether they will be living, access to private transport etc., however, you must be prepared to travel around 90 minutes. Where you have one placement that is around this 90-minute mark, we will always try to make your other placement much closer for you, depending on availability.

For PGCE Primary courses, we have over 120 placement providers across 15 local authorities including:

• Birmingham
• City of Wolverhampton
• Coventry
• Derby City
• Derbyshire
• Dudley
• Leicester City
• Leicestershire
• Sandwell
• Solihull
• Staffordshire
• Telford and Wrekin
• Walsall
• Warwickshire
• Worcestershire