PGCE Secondary (Physical Education)

The BGU secondary Physical Education PGCE is run by professionals who have worked within a range of secondary schools and continually trained the next generation of Physical Education teachers. The design of the course so that you will fell equipped to train with confidence but also become an outstanding secondary teacher.

You will consider the broader aspects of teaching, contexts for learning, the latest government initiatives and contemporary issues in teaching, learning and assessment. You will also work alongside trainee teachers of other subjects to consider cross-curricular aspects of education. These topics will introduce you to your career in the teaching profession.

Throughout your year of study, you will explore all aspects of your subject. This includes those areas that are your strengths, as well as areas you may need to improve upon. You will study how pupils learn in your subject area, how you need to assess them and how to keep abreast of new developments within your subject. You will learn how to plan and deliver topics in ways that include all types of learners in meaningful ways.

You will spend two thirds of the year in partner schools and other educational settings gaining rich and varied experiences designed to support meeting the standards for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). Working with peers, tutors and school-based colleagues, you will develop your abilities to promote effective learning among 11-19 year olds. You will also have opportunities to gain experience of the key stages before and after the ones in which you will qualify.

The PE route with an EBacc (English Baccalaureate) subject is a new teacher training option, launched by the DfE in 2018 and is seen as a professionally viable way for budding teachers who wish to specialise in PE but have a real interest in another EBacc subject. This route offers a training course that runs alongside the PGCE and School Direct programmes of study, which develops additional skills and experiences in an range of EBacc subjects, namely Science, Maths, English, History, MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) or Geography.

The route gives you the ability to teach in both subjects and develop insights in the pedagogies required to be successful in these disciplines. While on teaching placement you will predominantly teach PE and will only be assessed against the Teachers’ Standards in your PE lessons, but you will also teach your second subject. The strength behind this teaching route is that it offers a greater level of flexibility in your teaching employment and it gives schools something more than you just having the ability to teach PE.