How to get into teaching

To teach or not to teach? It’s a life-changing decision. Being a teacher is more than just a job, it’s a way of life. It’s a challenge but one in which you can make a difference to someone every day.

Why be a teacher? As a teacher you’ve got great career prospects, and a very portable job, one that will keep you close to home or take you around the world, depending on what you want to do.

We asked our qualified teachers why they teach and the reasons range from great job satisfaction, to seeing children grow in confidence, to love of learning, to lots of laughs and never being lost for a funny story. Many teachers told us there’s nothing to beat that ‘light bulb’ moment when something clicks for a pupil and you can both feel the progress they’re making.

It’s a rewarding role, and stable one that comes with a competitive salary too.

Schools develop their own pay scales to attract and retain teachers. Teachers’ pay rises are linked to excellent performance and taking on extra responsibilities, not to length of service.

While we're talking money, you’ll also want to check out government funding for teacher training courses. This changes every year depending on the current situation in terms of subject skills shortages. Also, all trainee teachers, whether on undergraduate or postgraduate courses, are eligible to apply for student finance.

Routes into teaching

You might already have noticed that there a lot of routes into teaching. Choosing the right one is quite simple once you get into it, we promise. The best route for you is determined by two key factors, these are the qualifications you already have and how certain you are that you want to teach.

So, which route to go for? You need a degree with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) to teach in UK maintained schools (i.e. schools managed by the local authority). Academies and free schools are not managed by the local authority and are not required to employ teachers with QTS however, most do require it. So you'll need QTS for most teaching jobs. There are different routes to achieving QTS, depending on whether you are starting training with or without a degree.

If you already have any undergraduate degree you can apply for a postgraduate teacher training course to gain QTS. The most popular option is a Postgraduate Certificate in General Education (PGCE). This is a full-time intensive course and you’ll achieve QTS in one year. 

Some PGCEs require trainees to spend more time on campus than others. These courses might be known as ‘campus-based’ PGCEs. Other courses deliver the teacher training curriculum more flexibility and provide less campus-based teaching. These course are sometimes described as ‘school based’.

You can train as a primary teacher with a degree in any subject at 2:2 or above, while to train as a secondary teacher you’ll need a degree in a subject related to the one you want to teach, again at 2:2 or above. All trainee teachers need GCSE English and Maths and grade 4 or C and primary trainees need the same in GCSE Science too (double or separate subjects is fine). Why not check out our teacher training courses or read more to help you choose between a campus-based or a school-based PGCE?

In some cases, you can also take a Subject Knowledge Enhancement (SKE) course to add a second secondary subject to your bow, for example if your degree is in French then you might add Spanish, or if your degree is in Chemistry, then you might add Physics.

If you don’t yet have an undergraduate degree, you’ll need to get one. Your options are:

• A three-year teacher training course with QTS or
• Any degree without QTS, in the subject you want to teach for secondary or ideally an education related degree for primary; followed by a postgraduate degree that awards QTS.

An undergraduate teacher training course with QTS is typically intensive and full-time for three years. If you’re certain that you want to teach and can meet the relatively high entry requirements (typically about BBC at A-level or DMM for BTEC) then a course with QTS could be just right for you. Some options include BEd Primary Education or BEd Secondary Education with PE or Maths and Science.

But there are lots of good reasons to take a non-QTS course too:

• You could study a course with less contact hours; a part-time course gives you more time to earn alongside studying, or more time for family responsibilities.
• If you are embarking on primary teaching without a degree, then this option enables you to build deep specialist knowledge for your future your teaching career, for example you could study something like BSc (Hons) P or BA(Hons) Special Educational Needs and Disability Studies.
• You may not meet the entry requirements for a QTS course but non-QTS courses can be much more flexible about entry requirements. If you don’t have all the standard qualifications, then volunteering or work experience in schools and strong recommendations from qualified teachers or headteachers may get you on to non-QTS courses such as BA (Hons) Primary Education or FdA Learning and Teaching.
• In terms of keeping your options open non-QTS courses can do this as they tend to have a broader curriculum meaning you’ll develop more transferable skill to apply to other roles. You may even find other careers that interest you as part of doing the non-QTS course

Remember you need to follow any degree without QTS with a postgraduate degree with QTS if you ultimately want to become a teacher.

If you want to become an Early Years Teacher, then you have two options - Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) or Early Years Teacher Status (EYTS). But the one you choose sets you on a very different career path. QTS enables you to teach reception class in maintained schools. EYTS enables you to teach in most Early Years settings including nurseries and preschools but not in maintained schools.

Set yourself up for teaching success

You don’t need any school experience to apply for teacher training. But while teaching is very rewarding, it isn't easy. Teaching is demanding, you’ll be teaching in class and doing other work outside of those times. It’s a really good idea to go into a school to see if teaching is right for you.

You have lots of options for getting a sense of what it is like to work in schools. They range from shadowing a teacher, to volunteering with children to paid roles like after-school club helper or mealtime assistant. Meanwhile teaching assistants are uniquely positioned to get a taste for life as a teacher and often excel after making the move from teaching assistant to teacher, check these tips for getting a job as a teaching assistant.

What to expect on teaching placement

You’re in, you’ve got your teacher training offer (woohoo!). What next? We'll now explore some elements that are common to all teacher training courses - these are going on teaching placements and moving into your first teaching job. If you find this helpful then check out the teacher training survivial guide for even more info.

This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Real students.

While teaching placements vary from course to course, any postgraduate teacher training course offers two teaching placements in different schools and undergraduate courses have more.

To start with you can expect a week or so of induction where you observe the classes you will be teaching. This will be an essential time to watch how the group works together and what the class dynamics are like, to help you plan your future lessons for them.

You’ll likely do a pupil pursuit too; this means you’ll shadow a student for a day to see the different experiences they have across their various teachers and subjects.

You’ll also get to observe expert teachers. You want to watch the best teachers in the school, they don’t need to teach the same subject as you. Observe how they do assessments, how they question the students, how they instruct the students and how they interact with their teaching assistants. Make sure to ask to observe someone with exceptional behavioural management skills and remember, the more you watch the more you’ll learn.

You will move on to participate in some team teaching. This will mean the class teacher will begin the lesson, let you come and teach a section, and then they’ll return to close the class. This way the experienced teacher is there and sets things up ready to teach your section.

From here you will then be asked to do solo lessons where you are responsible for managing the class and the teaching. The class teacher will be present during your solo lessons, so you’ll never be alone; they’ll only help if asked or if they feel the need to step in.

If you're teaching secondary, then your first solo teaching class will most likely be with Year 7; you’ll stay observing Years 10 and 11 for longer. Primary trainees could be asked to solo teach any year group.

Top tips for a successful school placement:

How to apply for your first teaching job

Teacher recruitment runs on a whole different timescale to pretty much any other job. You need to know how it works so as not to get caught out. Wait until you’ve got your degree and you’ll be too late.

Many schools start to recruit for September in January, with most teaching jobs being advertised from March to late May and the last few roles gone by early July. But your teacher training course likely ends in July, so you’ll likely be applying of your first teaching job ahead of qualifying as a teacher. This can feel a little wild if you’re on a one-year route into teaching, as you’re applying for jobs when you’re only halfway into your teacher training. But try to just go with it, and remind yourself that future employers will totally understand, after all, they’ve been there themselves.

A strong application for a first teaching job will express the following things, backing up your words with relevant real-life examples:

• Your passion for making a difference to children’s lives
• Personal commitment to lifelong learning
• Your approach to behaviour management and classroom management
• Your approach to planning, assessment and how you feedback to your pupils
• Your experience of teaching e.g. by age group, ability level, and solo and team teaching
• Your subject knowledge
• Any interests that you have that will enrich the wider life of the school such as musical or sporting abilities, think of anything you could add to their extra-curricular offering

Before you write anything read through the job description or person specification. These outline exactly the qualifications, knowledge, experience, and skills required for the role. Think of it as all the criteria that the school is going to be shortlisting against and aim to show how you meet every one.

To save time you’ll want to write a standard application that you can reuse but make sure to customise it for every school. The team there will care deeply about their school and their pupils, they’ll want to see the same coming from you. Find out what you can about the school and then showcase how your experience maps to their school community. You can do this by checking out the school website, doing a Google news search for the school, and by using the governments Compare Schools portal to see their pupil demographics, the latest exam and test results, and Ofsted reports.

A great application will give your future employers an insight into who you are and what you stand for. You can get this across by outlining why you wanted to get into teaching and by telling them a little about your experience of teacher training, for example by outlining the aspects that you found to be the challenging, enjoyable, and rewarding. See our article on how to apply for your first teaching job for more detailed tips on where to find a teaching job and on how to structure your job application.

There are a number of mentoring models that can be used by mentor and mentee to help structure their conversations. One is the GROW model; it works like this:

• Goal. What does the mentee want to achieve? What routes might you take?
• Reality. What is the current situation? What has been tried already and what did we learn from it?
• Options. What are the options? Look for more than two!
• Win commitment or Way forward. Set the next goal.

Description – describing the situation in terms of what, why, where, when and who

Feelings – exploring your own feelings before, during and after the situation, as well considering the likely feelings of the other people who were involved

Evaluation - look objectively at what approaches worked and which ones didn't

Conclusions – ask questions like:

• How could this have been a more positive experience for everyone?
• What would you do differently next time?
• What skills do you think you need to develop to help you with situations like this one?

Action – agree some actions and plan to implement and later review them

You’ll typically also agree the terms of the mentoring agreement, this is where mentor and mentee sign up to commitments around the boundaries of the mentoring relationship. These commitments tend to include a shared understanding around the roles in the relationship and cover confidentiality, frequency and duration of meetings.

You, the mentee, drive the mentoring relationship and take actions to drive your own development and call on guidance from the mentor. You’ll naturally have lots of questions and ultimately, you’re the one responsible for finding the answers and developing your own self-learning. It’s also important to remember that while you might be talking about quite personal things this is always a professional relationship and forum for professional discussion.

This is what you should expect from your mentor, they will:

• Use questioning - they ask questions and encourage the mentee to articulate their thoughts
• Share professional skills – they help the mentee to build their knowledge and expertise
• Be an active listener – they listen to understand, not listen to reply
• Dedicate time to the mentoring relationship
• Provide constructive and positive feedback – they act to lift up the mentee
• They facilitate for the mentee – Who else should you talk to? What should you ask them?
• Positive role model – they are honest and can provide examples of their own practice to support the mentee’s development

The mentor’s role is to move the relationship to a place where the mentee achieves independence, and is no longer reliant on the mentor. The mentor needs to support the mentee to a stage where they can say “I'm standing with you, let's learn together”. One example could be the mentee is struggling to manage the class behaviour then the mentor might model some strategies, direct the mentee to work observe teachers in action, and engage in some reading and research. The mentee does this, develops an action plan and puts it into place. Then mentor and mentee then come back together to evaluate and reflect on the impact of what they've done, and they set new actions based on the outcome. So, it becomes a reflective cycle.

The Department for Education teaching blog says that the Early Career Framework is something to get excited about, and it really is! The enhanced support it offers to new teachers makes this the perfect time to get into teaching. If you want to train to teach, then Plymouth Marjon University can help as we’ve got an extensive range of teacher training courses. We’ve been training teachers since 1840, we know education and we’d love to be part of your journey into teaching.