The primary teacher education course is designed for graduates who are committed to becoming primary school teachers. It trains you to teach children in the five -to-11 age range.

As a trainee you will learn how to teach the entire primary curriculum as well as choosing a particular route. The Special Educational Needs (Inclusion) route is designed to enhance your skills and confidence in meeting the strengths and needs of all pupils in mainstream classrooms.

East London offers multicultural, multilingual and vibrant schools in which to learn, but your training at UEL will qualify you to teach anywhere in England or Wales.

Our PGCE team is made up of experienced practitioners who have worked in a range of primary and Early Years settings across London as classroom teachers, curriculum co-ordinators, advisory teachers and school leaders.

At UEL you will be part of a diverse community of students. We want to bring to east London a teacher workforce that reflects the local community and, in 2013-14, 24 per cent of our Primary PGCE trainees were men.

You will learn how to be a primary class teacher. By the end of the year, you will understand how to teach the entire primary curriculum to a class of 30 pupils and be confident and competent in doing so.

You will leave the course with outstanding subject knowledge across the curriculum. You will have an understanding of how to plan and deliver engaging and motivating lessons and how to support your pupils’ progress.

You will learn how to identify the strength and needs of your pupils and make sure that everyone in your class is included and challenged.

You will understand how to assess pupils’ learning, how to spot the gaps in their learning and how to plan to fill those gaps.

Everyone on the Primary PGCE learns how to teach the whole curriculum. We will give you the confidence and skills you need to teach every subject.

You will also have extra sessions that will enhance your skills in meeting the needs of all pupils in mainstream classrooms and develop your understanding of particular Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.

You will learn to think critically about what is meant by ‘special needs’. You will discuss strategies for teaching and assessing children with various needs and try to find solutions for the difficulties you might encounter.

You will spend most of the first five weeks at the School of Education and Communities, in our purpose-built education building. Here we will look at pedagogy (how to teach) and curriculum (what to teach).

You will develop your knowledge of all subjects and your understanding of how to support pupils’ learning across the curriculum.

There are keynote lectures, with follow-up seminars in which you will discuss aspects of teaching, such as behaviour management and pupil progress, with your fellow trainees.

In addition, you will spend 12 hours over the year developing your knowledge and understanding of SEN.

Each session will have a specific focus and before each one there will be reading, tasks and research to complete.

There are two blocks of full-time school-based training on the course, each twelve weeks long. Your first teaching placement will usually start at the beginning of October.

Your UEL tutors will decide where you go on placement and arrange for it to be as convenient as possible for you.

You will be teaching, not helping, on the placement. You will start off working with groups of pupils, but your role is not to help the teacher – it is to support and increase the pupils’ learning.

You will have a school-based mentor (a teacher employed by the school) as well as a professional tutor from UEL who will visit you during each placement. This is partly to moderate and assess the quality of your work, but also to give you support, guidance and feedback.

In principle, your two placements will be in different schools. However, schools sometimes ask for trainees to return for a second placement.    

Who will teach on this course

Joy Donaldson

The teaching team includes qualified academics, practitioners and industry experts as guest speakers. Full details of the academics will be provided in the student handbook and module guides.

By working alongside schools and local authorities in our region, we are helping to meet the need for teachers in our local area and many of our students are offered posts by our partner schools. Some trainees have been offered jobs at schools where they have spent their placement.

Schools and local authorities have told us that they think our trainees are of a high standard. OFSTED’s 2012 inspection report quotes one school as saying, “They arrive in schools ready to start teaching and are well prepared for the rigours of the classroom.”

Backed by UEL’s excellent reputation, you will have a head start when it comes to securing a teaching post.

And when you are in a post and decide that you wish to take your academic qualifications further, we can help you to continue your academic and professional development.

Your PGCE will earn you 60 master’s level credits, which can count towards further qualifications on master’s courses at UEL.

Explore the different career options you can pursue with this degree and see the median salaries of the sector on our Career Coach portal