How to Write an Effective PGCE Teaching Statement

Hello everyone, my name is Claire Gilby, I'm a career coach, Ed Hill, and today I'm going to talk to you about how to

write

an

effective

PGC personal

statement

, as some of you will know this has changed since last year and we're now . Moving towards the application process from UCAS Today's session will very briefly summarize the application process. We have standalone events, workshops that take place for entry into teacher training that will cover this area in much more detail. I'm just going to briefly summarize the Request and Search today most of today's session will focus on the two

statement

s with examples.

I will give some final tips that I think are very important to take note of. I will show you resources throughout and finally I will tell you how careers can help you very briefly, the process of finding and applying for a course. Applications, as mentioned above, are made through this year's application and not as it is a government website. There is the direct URL and it will basically submit your statement. your application through them, you can search for postgraduate teacher training courses before the official application date, which this year is October 12. You can start your search, but don't continue, you can't apply tomorrow as it says that. officially until next Tuesday you can search by location, by topic, by training provider, and I'll show you a slide, the next slide, which will show you the next slides that will give you a picture of what the website looks like.

Well I thought it would be worth mentioning that the application will send an email to its two or more referees and the email will be, for the moment, this is all we can get from the dfe and we think it is the email they should receive . search is the one underlined here so it might be worth mentioning it to your referees so they keep an eye out for that in case it ends up in their spam folder, so ask for teacher training, here's what it looks like, you'll literally click the start now button um when you get to the website the search function looks like this you can search by postcode, town or city across England you can search for specific schools, colleges or training providers and again , there is the resource if you want to find it.

Directly game, as I mentioned, applications for 2020 entry are now under the application system, so you could apply for

pgce

s, direct school programs, parodies, postgraduate apprenticeships etc. Through this system, you would give your contact details, lists of your qualifications. work experience but mainly your personal statement is the application that academics will look for and teachers will look at your personal statement mainly but keeping everything else in mind there is a section to share any dbs information and if you need it. additional support too, you choose three options, you no longer pay, you only have to pay a pound, but you no longer have to.

Two referees are required, but you can actually provide more if you need it. Please note that on average it takes eight days to obtain a reference, so please note that to give you plenty of notice, there is no deadline for teacher training, but we always suggest that you apply with advance because some courses are really ours. pgc secondary pe um fills up very quickly within a few weeks in some situations, so please note that although there is no official closing date for other routes, for example such as

teaching

first, you will apply directly and take a look at the websites for the Help me with the application, I think this is a useful page that I have clipped and placed on my slides here for you.

There is a lot of help available. You can call and talk to someone on the phone for free. There is an online service. chat feature, but maybe it's interesting that this year we can talk to a real teacher, a training advisor who will contact you once you send them your details and they will book a time to talk to you in person and us. I'll give you some good advice, we hope. I put a photo here of Jaws. The dreaded statements. How do we structure our statements? So what I'm going to do is explain statement one to you.

And as you can see the title. it's up there and then statement two after covering these slides statement one is 600 words, about 30 to 40 lines in the past, you would have had to

write

a 47 line statement, a big white box that you would fill in with your reasons. for wanting to teach and in some ways I think the structure this year is much clearer and easier to write divided into two sections and I will talk to you like I said about the first statement, so the first question you really already know. What they want to know is why you want to be a teacher.

These are some of the topics you could discuss and I would advise you to follow them. I'm going to the next few slides will cover each of these. individually and we. I'll give you examples that might give you some ideas on how to structure your statement. So why do you want to be a teacher? Admissions tutors, Principals, want to know what your interest is in the subject or age group. I know why you want to teach. Maybe you could start with your eureka moment, what made you decide to go into

teaching

or what made you decide to become a teacher.

Try to avoid clichés. You know I always wanted to do it. been a teacher since I was you know an elementary school um trying to avoid um the word passionate um that's used a lot um or in the statements that I've read um they tend to be overused so speak from the heart um and the teachers who shoot up admission They want to know why you are interested in a particular subject or age group, the demands and rewards of teaching now it is no longer a requirement that you have experience in teacher training, but you know that if you don't, you will definitely need to provide it. . evidence of knowing what the demands and rewards of teaching were what are the personal qualities that would make you a teacher um it's very important that you know that teaching is, like I said, a vocation, so make sure you're a good candidate and understand Se They need teaching qualities and make sure this is stated in their statement.

It is imperative, how could I contribute to the school outside of the classroom? The directors would love it if they could offer extracurricular activities for example Duke of Edinburgh or it could be that you are an oboe graduate or something you know you can really offer this outside of the classroom um the directors would welcome you with open arms any past experience working with young children um and what you learned from this experience so it could be that you were a leader guide leader scout um you have worked with the national citizen service and whatever um it's always good in a statement um what do you think about welfare and education um I'll cover a slide on this?

This one is a little more complicated to answer. Really um and maybe none who were asked directly in the ucas application procedure um above so we'll talk about what you might want to think about with regards to welfare and education again you can't just talk to us about this . You can send us your statement and we will review it if you need more help or we can talk to you in person, but like I said, you can also contact a teaching advisor, an experienced teacher who can give you advice on how to apply it, so interest the age group theme.

These are a couple of examples you might want to look at. You know I won't read them out loud and you can read them yourself, but you know. What have you decided? You know, it made you decide that you would like to be a teacher. It could be that you have taught a language to children. um as part of a language degree. You already know. um, to show that you really understand how. It was a challenge, but it was still stimulating to teach your class, you know, take a look at the type of ex, you know they want to know what interests you might have had in your subject or age group, so take a look at the examples above.

And to see if you have anything you can apply, as well as your understanding of the demands and rewards of teaching, do you have any experience at school? Try to reflect on the experience as best you can. For example, you may have been involved in the national tutoring program which ran this summer to help young people left behind by Covid with their learning, it might be worth checking out the national teacher standards too if you really don't have much. teaching experience um teaching standards are standards that teachers not only trainee teachers at the pgc but also during a two year induction will have to follow um and I will show you a slide um talking to the next slide, we will talk to you about what The Teaching standards are... there is a section on your application form where you will provide details of experience at the school, so you don't need to go into too much detail here... just to show that you understand the role of the teacher.

Um, the benefits and drawbacks you know of teaching, so below again there are a couple of examples here. This person worked as a teaching assistant. And she learned that a teacher's job doesn't end at the end of the day. You still have a lesson. grading planning etc is quite a demanding role and tutors and admissions teachers like to know that you at least understand that it's not just a nine to five or nine to three job, teacher standards as a third party, you can look them up and there's the URL for you um, you can really understand what a teacher is expected to do in the classroom and you know, for example, setting high expectations that promote good progress and results, that students manage behavior

effective

ly, etcetera, so being aware of teacher standards, um, is, is good, um. or at least cite this maybe in your statement that you are aware of what are, what are the personal qualities that make you a good teacher, so again, anything that you may have that you think would contribute to becoming a good teacher. effective teacher. teacher, you know, be able to work under pressure, have some technical IT skills and especially during Kovitz, how useful would they have been, would have been any language skills, leadership and management skills, it might be useful for you to take a look at the website of prospects. because um you could search on primary teaching primary and secondary education and find the job profile and there will be a list of skills um needed for teaching that you might want to look at as well so here's an example from someone showing that I have excellent organizational time management skills and, most importantly, by giving evidence of them, you can't just make a statement, as we all know, you have to give evidence of, um, how you know, provide evidence of these skills with an example and the example.

It could be through your work experience through your academic work and your hobbies and interests, how could you contribute to the school outside of the classroom? And again, there are a couple of examples, you know, being able to offer French cuisine after school. clubs, you know anything, as I said before, Duke of Edinburgh, anything that can contribute to the school, you know, to a school outside the classroom and, as we all know, your school doesn't finish at three o'clock, there will be all . these after school clubs, any past experience working with children, youth and what you learned from them, anything you've done working in a youth club attending, you know, um camp america ncs, national citizen service vacation clubs , etc., and again, an example below. which you might want to read in your own time finally, um, the young people in statement one, your thoughts on welfare and education, um, it's important because it says here on the side that you are aware of the problems facing the education, um, you will be asked. this in an interview, you have to be aware of things that are happening, you know, I've given an example here of Cove, how greed has affected young people, you know, the fact that they've had to learn online, being aware of maybe. any mental health issues that may have arisen because of this, do you know what the national mentoring program has been and what it entails?

There are some great websites here that you can check out and stay up to date, you know, reading the times on a Friday, you read the BBC news education section, you might want to understand how to safeguard, obviously, well-being is a important issue within schools and take a look at the document on keeping children safe in education that the government has produced. I have given an example here, working as an outreach careers advisor, this person realized how easily children could become disengaged from education, that working alongside social workers, they would visit areas in their city where children could be being torreros and they interacted with them and gained their trust and this improved the ecclesiastical figures by persuading the child not to return to school,but it also protected you from potential exploitation, so this would probably be a good example of how to cover that particular area, so now let's move on to the second part, which is your suitability for teaching your subject or age group, so which this is a shorter statement of maybe 20 to 27 lines 400 words um the beautiful thing about filling out the statements this year, it has a big white box and as you type the words decrease.

It's pretty easy for you to see how many words you're actually using. It's very important to be as concise as possible, but make sure every word adds value to your statement. So, this, I would say: statement. two it's easier to write what they want to know is um they want detailed evidence of the knowledge and interest you bring to the subject you would like to teach, so talk about your A levels, national b-tech and how that might relate to the subject what you're going to teach, especially, you know, if it's secondary and the same with a degree, is there a particular module that you've studied? part of your degree that relates well to the national curriculum you will be teaching.

You may have written a dissertation as part of a master's degree or even your initial degree which could be quite applicable to teaching. What we want you to do is to relate all of this, all of these educational achievements to the national curriculum and you can actually search the national curriculum, just do a Google search on the national curriculum from the national government and you will be able to see, for example, if geography is your subject, how geography works. The secondary school curriculum will relate to your degree and vice versa, so it is very useful to have a look at the national curriculum and link it to your subject, if it is some sort of general early years primary education. .

Again, your degree level subject might have modules that support the national curriculum, you'll be national technical or you'll also be a level subject and you'll go back and talk about them and how they relate to the national curriculum. You may be a mature student and have had a lot of experience. you learned on the job and that could also be something you could write about. I have two examples here now, one for that and the other for teaching English, for example. I'm here, the English one. I'm interested in teaching you the subject, but it also teaches English skills at all levels, particularly in adapting information for different groups and purposes, talking here about English, um, she knows or he knows the high school curriculum in English because they've looked it up and they also talk about drama, um and you.

I know how relevant they are to the primary curriculum, so you know, we read these examples, like I said, that are on the slides in your own time, some little things, we're getting to the end, I think like I said. it's important for you to talk about your eureka moment the opener um in statement one why you actually want to be a teacher it needs to be powerful it needs to attract the reader um I often use the analogy it's a bit like you get into water stones you can take out a book off the shelf if it doesn't appeal to you um the first few pages you will return it and the same applies to your statement make sure it attracts the reader to continue reading What made you decide to want to become a professor?

Why what happened for you to realize that this is what you want to do again? Avoid clichés. um, you know, I've always wanted to teach. You know I'm passionate about it. this is about teaching, you know, try to make it as authentic as possible. Use action verbs. Just Google action verbs and you will find many will appear. These are pretty powerful words that make a CV, for example, or an application stand out. Verbs and I would recommend that you use them in your segment. Get the referees together as soon as possible. Spelling checker. Please check that your spelling is correct.

You know a spell checker can only do so much that it can't. Being able to discern between certain words like two and two and there and there and you know it, so get someone who is good at English to review your statement. Send your account statements to career service by asking a question. This is our website. Here is our service to ask questions and we can take a look at your statements. Give us a few days to get them to you, so not at the last minute, but we will look at it and comment on both statement one and statement two.

I hope my comments made sense, a really short tour, but I would definitely recommend that you also attend the teacher training workshops that we run regularly, but I hope this was also helpful. Thank you so much, goodbye.