(Untitled)

[blewoutthestars]

So I think it's kind of obvious that I hate my job. I've been doing some Big Thinking lately about what I'm actually going to do to earn money until I have the experience (and the funds) to go full out on the baking business, and I came up with... Primary School teacher. Which apparently both Antony and his mum had always expected me to become. I

Comments

[drop_the_phone]

I applied to do an Early Years degree before I ended up doing Journalism (cos, you know, it's normal to get from Politics to Journalism via teaching :P) My mum's a qualified primary school teacher, we have literally hundreds of books and magazines about loads of different subjects. Generally you'll have to do a maths and english test (for maths, actually do revise cos I didn't and only scraped by in all three ;) Year 6 SATs are a lot more difficult than I remember)

You'll have to know the area you want to go in (ie Early Years, Key stage 1, key stage 2) and also whether or not you'd be interested in doing something extra, such as SEN or MFL. (You'll also have to get totally au fait with acronyms, haha)

If you make initial contact with a couple of primary schools, they'll let you know about applying for a CRB check, because some schools will want an enhanced one, some will be happy with a specific CRB for that school. They should pay for it for you, although if it's enhanced you might have to pay for it yourself? I'm not sure, but that's definitely something you need to ask about when you phone around.

Phoning around you should probably do sooner rather than later. I'm not sure when the PGCE application closes but the CRB can take about 6 weeks to come through, so if you're applying now then you can start looking for work experience in the new year? To be honest, schools are all starting to wind down a bit for christmas now, and it's also prime time for OFSTED at the moment so the last thing schools want is for someone to need a lot of coaching and stuff. They're more than happy for people to come and observe and things like that, just not at OFSTED time. Also if you want to do Early Years, you'll have to observe nursery groups as well, so after christmas is when a lot of children start full-time intake, meaning you'll be able to establish more of a relationship with the groups you're helping :)

If you need anything else, just shout :) I'm more than happy to lend you some of the books and stuff we have as well, if you think any of it could be useful.

x x x

[blewoutthestars]

Oh you're a star <3 I'm going to start the hunt for experience later today I think. The uni reckons that most of the applications are in by december so I really want to get it in by then; if I can't get any experience before then I'll just put about how I've got some lined up for the new year or whatever (assuming I've got some lined up, of course...)

I might need your help s'more if I actually get an interview heh. Part of the interview processs is to give a presentation about an issue currently affecting primary schools, so I will probably need some help figuring that out haha.

xxxxx