The School of Education at the University of Birmingham has a long tradition of delivering teacher training courses. Its teaching has been recently graded as ´outstanding´ for the third consecutive time by Ofsted inspectors which reaffirms the University’s status as one of the UK’s leading institutions for excellence in teacher training. The Ofsted report states that “such is the confidence of schools that trainees from the University of Birmingham are of high quality, employment rates for both primary and secondary phases exceed national averages by some margin. Trainees display excellent professional qualities: they are clear that good teaching leads to pupils who are interested in their work, enjoy learning and behave well.”
The Initial Teacher Education course
The Initial Teacher Education (ITE) course is 36 weeks long of which 24 weeks are spent on placement in a partnership school. There are five phases: Preparation (university and some school-based activities); School Placement 1 (seven week placement in school); Development (university and one week in your second school); School Placement 2 (12 week block placement and some university days); Completion (two further weeks in second school and two weeks in university).
Teaching is an inherently complex activity, and teachers choose their teaching strategies for a variety of reasons. Consequently we will equip you to analyse your ideas about teaching and understand the range of ideas that are behind all talk about teaching. You will be equipped to use the most up to date ideas about teaching but also to appreciate that these will in turn become outdated and replaced by new strategies.
You will teach classes in Key Stage 3 and 4 as well as post-16, and learn to select the most effective teaching methods. Our sessions model different teaching methods so you experience the methods you can use. Our close links with history departments in schools means we are not only able to use the 30 years of teaching experience of the tutors but get teachers in to talk about their experience of teaching too.