Primary School Experience
Before your secondary course begins, we would like you to arrange to spend between two and five days in a state primary school in England if possible.
This can take place at any time that is convenient to you before the start of the PGCE course. The aims of this experience are to help you understand the context and experiences of being in primary school, to learn from the experienced teachers there and to make sense of the transition that pupils experience as they move to a secondary setting.
As school are busy places, we recommend that you contact schools to organise this placement as soon as you have accepted a place on our course.
Full details about the aims and requirements of this experience are contained in the primary school experience booklet, which also includes a record for you to fill in when you have completed the experience.
In addition, you can download a letter you can use to introduce yourself to a primary school head teacher, and a school report form which you should ask the head teacher to complete when you have finished your school experience.
Please read through all the accompanying materials carefully before contacting the school and planning your primary experience.
Virtual primary school experience
If, despite your best efforts, you are unable to arrange a physical placement in a school, we would like you to engage with the tasks in this vitrual primary experience booklet. The tasks in the booklet allow you to gain an awareness of secondary pupils’ previous experience of school and to develop an understanding of issues concerned with the transition from primary to secondary.
The links below direct you to documents you should engage with alongside your ‘virtual’ experience in a primary school:
We hope you enjoy working on these tasks and we look forward to reviewing the experience with you at the start of the course.