Overdue Posts 3

Thursday 25th February 2021

I still haven't decided which university to go to but one of them had a taster day which I attended and took notes from. The notes might not make too much sense but thought it was right to put them in a blogpost anyway.

Birmingham taster day (15th February 2021)

Birmingham taster day

2 year course, more intensive, more lectures and study time

Takes more commitment and time management skills

Did not go to the open day

Age 5-11

What does the Primary Education degree involve?

What career options does the degree support?

What does an accelerated programme look like?

How will I be assessed?

What are the facilities at UCB?

What does the PGCE at UCB involve?

An introduction to outdoor learning and Forest School

This course does not give you QTS but prepares you for taking PGCE afterwards.

What is PGCE? The postgraduate certificate in education – or PGCE is a one- or two-year academic qualification you can achieve during your teacher training. It is 10 months (120 days in school) at Birmingham. You will be qualified to teach ages 3 to 11 and there will be two assessed school placements and one unassessed special school placement. By the end it would give you 60 Masters credits.

I think 1/3 of the course is practical and the rest is theory.

All of the modules throughout the course will be based on these for themes :

Political and Cultural Context-Knowledge

The Learning Environment-Application

The Child as a Learner-Knowledge

Practitioner Identity-Reflection

They have a national students survey and pull together to help each other.

All lectures are interactive and there will always be room to talk and question and such and will reflect of what is needed to know. Because they have smaller groups, it's a really supportive environment.

Some career options are primary school teacher, teaching assistant, community education officer, museum education officer.

They have something called the assessment only route but that wouldn't be suitable after this course. It is a 12 week programme for people already at the level of a teacher but they don't have the qualifications yet and are just assessed.

Some of the notes are for her. A lot of the work will be online but not all. 40 weeks spent in school.

This degree does not any exams but has a real range of assessments.

Module D is when we go into placements, and they work with us to find placements. By May, all level 4 will be done. Usually other courses would stop at May and continue in October but this course still goes on. Module E and F is online which sort of gives you time in summer.

Module G goes right up until the end of September so until year 2.

The dates are guesstimates. By January level 5 modules will be done. Work based learning is just in level 4 and 5. Module M is the dissertation. Second year should be done by the start of August.

Teaching may be in lectures or flat rooms. There will be group work and reflection on experience of the work place. There will be seminars based on the lectures but they will be in smaller groups. There will be lots of opportunity for discussions and debates and there may be guest speakers from across the sector. There will be clear guidance but you will still need to manage your time.

There will be a range of assessment types: presentations, academic posters, essays, case studies, portfolios, blogs, reports and journal articles. This is to allow for individuality, promote creativity and develop employability skills.

There will be no interview for this course.