Teaching in the United Kingdom

Posted on February 22, 2014 at 2:46 pm

It is a great career choice to become a teacher in the United Kingdom. You will be able to achieve a high level of professional achievement apart from creating excellent friendships with your work colleagues. Depending upon the kind of job you are looking for, there are many teaching jobs available throughout the UK. A visit to a teacher agency will open up the door of opportunities and help you land your dream teaching job.

There are various ways to become a teacher in the UK; however, primarily and most importantly you should get a Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) in order to qualify to teach in schools maintained by the State. If you want to get QTS then you can try one of the following five ways:

While you are studying for your undergraduate degree you can simultaneously study to become a teacher. You have to select your subject area like History, Mathematics or English and work hard to get a Bachelor of Education degree. The total time required to obtain this degree is 3-4 years but you can bring it down to 2 years if you have completed the tertiary subjects previously. You will be able to cut down your study time by obtaining credits for the same.

You can complete your teacher training as a postgraduate and get Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) certification if you have already obtained the Bachelor of Education degree. The postgraduate certification can be obtained by people who have already obtained the bachelor degree in a specific subject area. If you are taking the postgraduate course full time then you will be able to complete it in 1 year; however, if you are opting for part time then it will take 2 years to get the PGCE certification. By doing this course you will be taught how to teach the specific subject to the children using correct ways and methodologies of teaching. If you are going for full time course then you can enrol in a university. If you are opting for part-time course then you can select one of the distance learning institutes. A well established teacher agency will help you out to find out the best one.

If you are already employed in a school you can still go for teacher training. You will be trained to become a teacher while you are earning your livelihood at the school. The best thing about learning and teaching together is that you can apply all the methodologies while you are learning them straight away. This will help to preserve all the teaching techniques in mind for a long time.

You may qualify for assessment based teacher training if you have considerable amount of teaching experience. If you pass the assessment test then you will earn your Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). This option is only for those who have been teaching in the UK for some time. You can find out from teacher agency about the availability of such options where you can get your teaching skills assessed in order to get QTS.

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