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The PGCE Secondary RE program is a one year PGCE program leading to the recommendation
for QTS status, which also allows you to be a specialist secondary practitioner in Religious
Education. The real strength of the PGCE Secondary program
is the partnership is really at the heart of everything that we do, and our school partners
are involved with everything from recruitment of our PGCE students and that's for the University
and school centre programs right through to final grading and assessment for those.
I wanted to do the PGCE because I wanted to develop my teaching skills, but not only at
secondary level but also at degree level. I like the idea of marrying theory with practice.
I just didn't want to do my practice and didn't just want to look at the theory of teaching,
I wanted to marry the two together, and at York St John their PGCE allows you to do that.
While we expect our students to come to us with a degree of subject knowledge, that's
supported on the program with development opportunities, with enrichment opportunities
and with the subject related sessions that they have in the University, that are then
followed through into schools. I chose the program because of my degree;
I studied in Theology and Religious Studies. I was really into teaching and York St Johns
was just, it seemed right for me with the support, it's a really small group, and the
support is really there I felt that from the start.
Our support network is both internal and external. At the University base we have a professional
mentor and we have a subject knowledge mentor, and we are able to draw from specific questions
and needs that we have. In our placements we have again a professional mentor and a
subject knowledge mentor and we are able to see beyond the academic side of things but
begin to ask questions that have a real practical impact on our teaching practice.
They want us to leave the course as outstanding teachers; they want us to be employable and
so they give us the support necessary to achieve that.
We've worked really hard to integrate the theoretical and academic elements of the program
with the practical elements. So everything that we do in academic sessions we're all
geared up to underpinning the practice in schools, and that's a really essential element
that our PGCE students understand, not just what they're doing but why they're doing it,
and so on, and hopefully that makes them stronger teachers in the future.
Throughout the course there's a lot of enrichments, already the first week we went to Bradford
to visit the places of worship which is really important for the subject. We've also got
a lot of other trips, to art galleries, to Quaker meetings.
We have had a day in Manchester where we went and looked around a Buddhist temple and it's
marrying that sort of knowledge that we already have with the religions, but actually seeing
it in practice, that really helped, and the wealth of speakers that came in and offered
us their experience was excellent. We get a real clear perspective of various
world views, and it enabled us to engage with perspectives that we can't learn from text
books but from people who have studied it, who have lived it out and taught it for several
years. The strength of the PGCE Secondary programs
are the very strong partnership that enables us to provide a really consistent and coherent
program of training for our students. Well what doesn't York have, it is a magnificent
city, it's got the history, it's got the vibrance, it's a lovely place to study.
If you are looking at getting into teaching, you can't get any better than York St Johns.
The expertise of the site, makes you a prime candidate to be employed.
I'd definitely recommend it because you have the support put in place, its small groups
so you do feel that you can get the best experience out of it.
Be prepared to work hard because there is a lot of work involved.
We hope by the end of the program our students are in the best possible position to be able
to take up jobs. York St John has given me the passion that
teaching Religious Studies is the best job possible, so as long as I'm doing that well,
that's my ambition.