PGCE Secondary
Areas focused upon in interview
Professional Attributes
This includes high expectations and commitment to realising and raising pupil potential; professional behaviour; facility for collaboration, reflection and innovation.
Professional Knowledge and Understanding
This includes subject knowledge as defined with your degree/academic qualification, but also the curriculum context of the subject – i.e. what and how it is taught in schools.
Professional skills in relation to teaching and learning
This includes your reflections from your own observation/experience of teaching/learning. All applicants are expected to have had some experience/observation in a secondary school.
You will be assessed upon the following elements:
- Subject knowledge per se - The essential knowledge and understanding needed in order to teach a subject effectively
- Pedagogy: subject theory and practice - An understanding of the teaching skills and strategies needed to teach all pupils effectively
- Pupils' development - An understanding of how learning is linked to pupils' development and their social, religious, etnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds and contexts
- Attitudes - Positive attitudes to pupils' learning that underpin subject knowledge, skills and understanding
(For more information, go to www.tda.gov.uk )
Literacy Assessment
In order to assess their command of
- written Standard English and reading
- spoken Standard English
all candidates undertake a literacy assessment during the interview as follows:
- Applicants are asked to read a short article from a national newspaper on an educational topic and respond to this in writing
- Applicants are given a pupil’s written response and asked to identify any errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar
Programme specific information and documents:
- PGCE Secondary English
- PGCE Secondary Geography
- PGCE Secondary Mathematics
- PGCE Secondary Modern Foreign Languages
- PGCE Secondary RE
- PGCE Secondary Science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics)