Primary Education

The Early Years 3-7 programme prepares you for the very early teaching and learning experiences. In this role, you’ll spend time helping children develop through experiential, play-based learning. You’ll be a key figure in nurturing children’s communication and social, emotional and physical development, as well as teaching the first skills needed to support the rest of their school years.

The Later Years 5-11 programme prepares you to build on the prior knowledge and skills that children have developed in the Early Years Foundation Stage and support them to develop key skills, such as working with others, problem-solving and communication. Teaching across this age-range, you’ll provide high quality learning opportunities to help children develop these skills effectively and prepare them for moving to secondary education and beyond.

You’ll develop knowledge and understanding of the statutory frameworks that teachers work within as well as best practice in meeting your legal and ethical obligations in key areas such as safeguarding and child protection.

Our focus is on developing your ability to teach a broad and balanced curriculum and gain an understanding of subject and age-specific pedagogy to enable you to plan, teach and assess across the curriculum confidently.

An important aspect of training to teach is developing your understanding of why we work in certain ways. Understanding the theory behind what works helps you to reflect professionally on your teaching and sets you up to be confident in your own practice and decision-making.

You’ll spend substantial time working alongside practitioners in Early Years and Primary settings. To help you develop the confidence you’ll need to become a teacher, you’ll complete at least 24 weeks of school-based training as part of your degree. We’ll support you to build your skills gradually, so you’ll be ready to take on the role of class teacher by the time you undertake your final placement.

Our dedicated School Partnerships team will work with you to find the right opportunity for your school-based training. You’ll be allocated a university link tutor and a school-based mentor for each placement who will support you throughout your training.

Before you complete each block of school-based training, you’ll take part in intensive and immersive preparation training led by your Primary Education lecturers.