Course summary

The three-year Primary Education course at BGU is designed to allow you to study a vocational honours degree in Primary Education leading to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). It provides an integrated academic and professional preparation for teaching. If you believe that you can inspire children to learn and are passionate about the role that primary education plays in shaping a child’s future, then this is the course for you. Have you been taught by someone who has truly inspired you? Are you ready to pass your knowledge and enthusiasm on to children to help shape their futures? This course will provide you with an integrated academic and professional preparation for teaching, leading to Qualified Teacher Status. Our course team will work with you to enhance and develop your understanding of learning and teaching. You’ll spend a significant amount of time in school throughout the course, and will be encouraged and supported as you learn to develop effective ways to teach the whole primary curriculum. You will explore the theory and practice of primary education and develop a personal philosophy that will underpin all that you seek to achieve with the children you teach. Initially, you will work with small groups of children, progressing on to working with a whole class with the support of a mentor. This then leads to longer personalised school placements in your second and third years where you will take full responsibility for whole classes of children. Our course is based around the Initial Teacher Training Core Content Framework to ensure you are well prepared to teach during each of the placements and to prepare you for your future career in the classroom. You will study modules that develop your understanding of pedagogy and educational theory, curriculum subject knowledge, assessment, behaviour management, inclusion, professional behaviours, wellbeing and educational research. In year one you will begin to reflect on the nature of learning and teaching including the requirements of the national curriculum, classroom management, behaviour, assessment, planning, SEN and Inclusion, the core subjects of the primary curriculum (English, Mathematics, Science), along with the foundation subjects. You will also spend time working with children both at the university and in school. In your second and third years, you will specialise in one age phase – 3-7 or 5-11. The modules in year two build on and extend understandings developed in the first year of the course, with a particular emphasis on issues relating to research, curriculum knowledge and SEN and Inclusion. You will also widen your school experience, perhaps by visiting multicultural and special schools, as well as undertaking a more extensive solo placement focusing on your chosen age range. Your third year will help you to prepare you for life as an Early Career Teacher (ECT formerly known as NQT). As well as extending your learning from Year 1 and Year 2, in Year 3, you will carry out a research project in an area of interest to you. Your final school placement provides the opportunity to take on responsibility for a whole class. At the end of the course, you will undertake a transitional placement to further develop your school-based knowledge and skills. On completion of your degree, with your recommendation for Qualified Teacher Status, you’ll be fully equipped with the skills and knowledge to work as a primary school teacher.