Secondary Religious Education with QTS - PGCE

Course structure

This postgraduate course takes place over one year full-time. Note that all PGCE with QTS courses commence teaching in the first week of September.

This course aims to produce highly skilled graduate teachers who have an in-depth knowledge and understanding of teaching and learning, which will enable them to demonstrate the highest levels of professional practice.

By the end of the course, you will be confident, reflective and accountable practitioners, able to deliver a rich and diverse curriculum in a contemporary cultural context.

You will be able to accept responsibility for determining and achieving professional goals and exercise professional judgements, based on an informed understanding of education and subject pedagogy.

This is an intensive and demanding course, which offers superb preparation for anyone who is committed to educating young people.

Central to the curriculum is the study of education, pedagogy and professional practice from both generic and subject-specific perspectives, which is delivered using a combination of workshops, lectures, seminar groups and individual study.

To complement this is a programme of subject knowledge and enhancement that supports the development of subject pedagogy. Specialist subject knowledge is up-dated throughout the course to ensure trainee teachers are fully conversant with curriculum requirements.

You are expected to take on significant responsibility for their own progress and development. This system of professional development profiling is welcomed particularly among those who have completed the course because it sets you apart from their peers in their first year of teaching.

Lead school partners

The lead school partner approach enables multi-academy trusts, or groups of schools, to offer teacher education courses offered in collaboration with a university partner. You may prefer to apply to a lead school partner if, for example, the range of schools where you could be placed for your teaching practice, better suits your circumstances. You spend the same amount of time on school placements and will study on campus with us for most if not all your taught sessions. You will also have the same access to a personal development tutor and all the resources we offer.

Our lead school partners for this PGCE Secondary course are (see links for details such as location maps and contact details):

• Teach Central
• Lozells (Holte)
• Waverley Education Foundation Trust

Placement locations

Our students are asked to complete some forms for placements around whether they will be living, access to private transport etc., however, you must be prepared to travel around 90 minutes. Where you have one placement that is around this 90-minute mark, we will always try to make your other placement much closer for you, depending on availability.

For PGCE Secondary courses, we have over 100 placement providers across 14 local authorities including:

• Birmingham
• City of Wolverhampton
• Coventry
• Derby City
• Derbyshire
• Dudley
• Leicester City
• Sandwell
• Solihull
• Staffordshire
• Telford and Wrekin
• Walsall
• Warwickshire
• Worcestershire

Examples of classroom activities

Exploring the link between theory and practice is central to your PGCE Religious Education course. As a result of this many aspects of the workshops in university are structured to share not only subject knowledge, but also to reflect theory and model potential lesson tasks. As part of the course there will be opportunities for your demonstrate your developing professional skills

• Developing religious literacy in your classroom / department 
• Understanding the role of ethos and culture 
• Considering the practical nature of RE
• Exploring the importance of ‘talk’ in the RE classroom.