With this week’s announcement that trainee teachers will have to pass a personality test to be able to train (TES, 8 June 2012), teacher training is once again at the forefront of educational debate. But the big question is, personality test or not, which pathway should you follow?
Follow the yellow brick road
The two principal teacher training pathways in the UK are the Post/Professional Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) and the Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP). One of the main attractions of the GTP over the PGCE may be financial; six months into their term of office, the government laid out plans to cut ITT funding by up to 85% (TES, 23 November 2010). In reality, PGCE grants were drastically cut (my current trainee receives at least £3000 less than I did for the same course). GTP students, however, receive a salary from their placement school or the Teaching Agency with a fixed minimum which is based on the Unqualified Teachers’ Pay Scales, and accounts for a lot more than a normal PGCE bursary.
Delightful possibilities for exploitation
There is, of course a downside to being paid such a good salary to train. As Head of Languages Isabelle Jones puts it:
With the GTP you do get paid, but some schools can see you as cheap labour as well.
This is, unfortunately, all too true; whilst as a GTP student you are normally employed as supernumerary (ie: on top of the teaching staff already at the school), plenty of schools will happily use you to fill a gap in their timetable, leaving you alone in a class without the kind of regular feedback given to PGCE students. Teacher of MFL Nina Elliot agrees that this can be a risk, but nonetheless supports the GTP…
…with appropriate support and in a school which understands you are NOT a full time teacher.
This, in my opinion, is too big a variable to risk.
A question of experience
The GTP naturally lends itself to those coming to teaching from other industries and not straight from university, since it enables them to ‘train whilst working’ and still earn a salary. Yet self-proclaimed career-shifter Alex Foster (http://alexfoster.me.uk/), currently studying for his MFL PGCE, still thinks that this was a better route than the GTP:
Don’t do the GTP unless you already work in a school. I am glad, as a mature career shifter, of the support and peers from the PGCE approach.
This, I have to say, is one of the main reasons I support the PGCE over the GTP; peer mentoring is such an important process when you are learning to teach, and a lot of this can be lost through the GTP because contact with your peers is minimal. I was lucky to follow a unique course with Canterbury Christ Church University which saw me spend four months at university in France with seven other trainees; this was a real bonding experience and one that left me with some very close friends, with whom I still now share ideas and resources.
The other obvious advantage of the PGCE is that…
…students get a wider range of experiences through their various placements and enrichment opportunities. (Isabelle Jones)
In other words, the experience you gain as a teacher in two contrasting placements of more-or-less equal length could be said to outweigh the experience of just one school with a brief placement elsewhere, particularly when you consider that this experience is also backed up by more educational theory than the GTP, delivered by the relevant ITT provider.
Whatever route you choose, the ultimate deciding factor of how well you are trained is how you respond to your training, so make sure you pick the best pathway for you.
Have your say
What do you think – GTP or PGCE? Or do you feel that one of the other pathways, such as Teach First, is a more viable option?
Quotations in the above post were taken from comments on Twitter, and have therefore been modified appropriately.
Bob McKay 