Why consider becoming a teacher?
- It’s a fulfilling career with excellent job satisfaction, security and opportunities for progression.
- It gives you the chance to inspire the next generation and make a lasting difference to young people’s development, unlocking capabilities and talents that they didn’t even know they had.
- Using your knowledge and own education to inspire others is hugely rewarding.
- The quality of life is also great with up to 13 weeks holiday.
- As a teacher, you’ll learn to be a brilliant mentor, manager and consultant.
- Most of the day you are your own boss.
- There’s no such thing as a ‘typical’ day. That’s because no two days are the same – you’re unlikely to ever be bored by a lack of variety.
- Starting salaries are £24.4k and an average full time qualified teacher earns £34.6k. Headteachers can earn £100k.
Primary or Secondary?
At some point, you will have to decide what age you wish to teach. Primary education tends to be more generalist, secondary requires you to specialise by subject. You can however specialise in maths or PE in primary schools. Alternatively train to be an early years teacher – playing an essential role in a child’s development between birth and five. At the other end of the spectrum, you could consider further education, teaching students post secondary school working in colleges, sixth form colleges or independent specialist colleges.
What qualifications are required?
You need grade C in Maths and English at GCSE and if you want to teach primary school children you need grade C in a science as well. You then need to have a degree. This can be a subject degree or can be an education degree coupled with a subject or even just a degree in education or one just specialising in primary education. Universities tend to specialise – so some may offer education & history or English for example, others may offer chemistry or sociology. Most subjects are covered.
You may however be better off just simply taking a 3 year degree in the subject of your choice and then go on to do a postgraduate qualification in teaching which takes a year. This way you keep your options open, in case you change your mind and decide against teaching.
Postgraduate qualifications
There are 4 routes into teaching as a graduate, three of which involve training in a school and the other training at university. All routes lead to QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) and many to PGCE. They are generally all a year in length.
- School Direct Training Programme
- Teach First
- School-Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT)
- Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE)
Click HERE for more details
Financial Incentives
Did you know that for a whole range of subjects, scholarships and bursaries are paid as a financial incentive to postgraduates on salaried teaching training courses. These can range from payments of £25k to £4k. They are mainly aimed at maths, science, IT and languages graduates. They do also include humanities, music, D&T, RE and English graduates. You qualify if you have a degree in the particular subject and the amount of the payment depends on the level you achieved in your degree.
