Primary teacher education

The Primary Teacher Education team aims to produce teachers who are confident, critical and creative professionals. Throughout our teacher training courses, you will gain the knowledge, understanding and experience to meet children’s individual needs within the primary classroom. We have also created a concise guide to preparing for your PGCE Primary on this website.

Teaching is a creative, inspiring and rewarding profession. As a teacher you can make a lasting contribution to children’s lives, an impact that has far reaching influences and consequences.

Our teacher training courses provide you with the skills, knowledge and understanding to enter the profession with enthusiasm and confidence as a newly qualified teacher, so that you are able to motivate and inspire young learners. A measure of our success is the very high employment rates shown on completion of our primary teacher training courses (97% of our graduates are successful in gaining a teaching post).

During your course you will have the opportunity to work in a variety of school and early years settings, according to your preferred training age. We have partnerships with a large number of schools across the region and will endeavour to provide placement experiences for you in different educational settings, from rural to inner city and suburban schools.

Classroom practice on the courses is permeated by the theory of learning and teaching through a range of opportunities, with assessments and directed learning tasks closely linked to the school based aspects of the training. We also draw on the expertise of our partners, in schools, local authorities and national organisations. Through off-site educational visits for trainees as part of the BA (Hons) Primary programme, we demonstrate how the curriculum can be enriched to enhance children’s learning.

We have links with a range of local and national organisations to support and enhance our courses. Current examples include: