Your trainee year starts with a one-week summer school based in our lead schools. You will then spend your academic year in your host school with additional training one afternoon each week. In addition, you will complete a second placement at a contrasting school. Assessment will continue throughout the course, based on your classroom experience and achievement measured against the DfE Teaching Standards, while your academic PGCE study will comprise of two academic assignments, assessed by Goldsmiths.
Before starting training with United Teaching, all trainees will be invited to attend a minimum of two days induction at their host school. Activities will include pupil shadowing, lesson observations focusing on behaviour and learning, routines, expectations, teaching and learning strategies, and assessment for learning, as well as meeting key people that will be supporting you with United Teaching throughout your training year.
Our weekly training sessions follow our United Teaching Primary curriculum which covers pedagogy, assessment, curriculum, behaviour and professional behaviour. Our curriculum is sequenced to support trainees to become the best teacher they can be and we have mapped our progression to align with a trainee’s experience as they progress throughout the year. Some key themes are revisited throughout the training year, such as reading, as we want our trainees to be extremely competent in teaching these aspects of the curriculum.
All of our training sessions are delivered by experts in their field (such as English and maths advisors) and the focus of each week’s training directly links to the trainee’s in class teaching the following week. This means that there is clear impact between the training a trainee receives and what this looks like in the classroom. Weekly mentoring and observations will also have a focus on the training received so trainees can continuously improve throughout their journey. In the first 6 weeks of the programme we will look at:
The Salaried Primary route is extremely competitive. Please contact us for more information on how to be successful in applying for this route or to discuss alterative routes available to you: train@unitedteaching.org.uk
Our weekly training sessions follow our United Teaching spiral curriculum which covers pedagogy, assessment, curriculum, behaviour and professional behaviour. Our curriculum is research-informed with a strong emphasis on application and practice to help build classroom confidence and develop effective use of high impact teaching strategies. After each training session, trainees have a weekly mentor meeting which provides an opportunity for trainees to discuss and reflect with a subject expert and to co-plan and practice before trying things out in the classroom. This allows our training programme to be bespoke and personalised to the needs and subject area of each trainee.
Our Friday sessions are facilitated by dedicated training leads and expert teachers as well as visiting key note speakers and we also have a programme of subject specific training sessions with United Learning subject leads and advisors.
In the first 6 weeks of the programme we will look at:
High expectations, behaviour and classroom routines
Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction
Developing effective relationships with students, colleagues, parents and carers
Lesson planning and learning objectives
Assessing learning and how to check for understanding
Please note that not all subjects will be available for every cohort. You can find out which subjects we are currently advertising here.
Module settings have been updated.