Undercooked

Has the PGCE outstayed its welcome? If the calibre of students coming into Zak Willis’ school are anything to go by, it’s long since gone off the boil...

I’ve been wondering recently whether the PGCE is still worth its salt. Every so often these strange beings arrive in our staffroom looking dazed, worried and a little lost. I’m then informed they will grace us with their shadows for several weeks during the year. Many do not last the course; some do not even last the month, and I haven’t recruited a single one of them. 

Now, I should point out that I am not decrying the PGCE historically: I know many good teachers who entered the profession this way (up until, I would argue, around 2010 when the financial crisis truly hit). But then I would suggest there’s a reason for this. When these people trained, getting on the PGCE was fiercely difficult, and it was a good course. So what’s changed?

In my view, this outdated and inadequate approach does not fully prepare enrollees for the demands and rigours of modern education. And the key issue, for me, is selection: when I were a lad, the number of people on the PGCE course were minuscule, they were generally connected to a subject and they had to work intensely for a period that stretched beyond the year itself. They were an elite band. 

Now, the number of PGCEs is astronomical – we are forever being called and hassled about the possibility of taking on additional students. The problem is that the calibre is just not good enough; I am staggered, and not a little offended, by some of the students who have passed through our doors. Simply put, they are often bachelors or masters with no set path, people who feel that the world owes them a living, or those who’ve tried everything else and so think they’ll “give teaching a go”. The teacher training institutes have to be far more rigorous in their selection processes, or it will continue to fall to people like me to tell failing students the simple truth: they are not good enough for our profession.

For those who should be on teacher training courses, my issue is that the PGCE does little to prepare them for the demands of the role. They often come with a colour-by-numbers guide to planning and assessment, but have no notion of how children learn or what makes learning exciting. They are at lost loss when it comes to dealing with an angry parent in the morning, or how to remain professional in the face of a harrowing child protection case later that afternoon. The course, as I know and see it, does not prepare teachers to have the resilience and skills the modern profession requires. (Of course, the correct course applicants, if they get selected, often bring these attributes themselves – potential selection criteria TTA?)

So what’s the difference? Why is an extended course better at preparing the candidates we need for the profession? I would argue it’s a combination of simple factors. A longer, more intense course offers greater exposure to pedagogy, to practice, to a range of schools, to a range of teachers and support staff, to different communities and their specific niches and requirements, and, most importantly, to upwards of 1000 children. Above all, it offers you repeated and relentless opportunities to rehearse, refine and reflect on the teacher you are and the teacher you long to be.  Only in my fourth year of a BA QTS, in my sixth school, did I encounter the teacher who was to become my true idol, my true role model. And I knew him when I saw him because I had spent the last three and a half years creating him, through reflection, through comparison, and through study – all of which required a certain depth of study and repeated exposure.

It’s a shame, but the PGCE has fallen behind the times. A once tried and tested route into teaching, it can no longer be said to truly serve the profession it feeds and, ultimately, its precious service users, the children.

About the Author

Zak Willis is headteacher at Badock’s Wood Primary School in Bristol. He blogs at badockshead.blogspot.co.uk