PGCE Secondary Business Education / Course details

PGCE Secondary (Business Education) will prepare you to teach business education across the 14 -19 age range, including the National Curriculum, GCSE and A-level.

It might also include teaching broader curriculum areas contributed to by business departments in schools, such as computing and IT, accounting and key vocational business qualifications.

Completion leads to a postgraduate qualification and recommendation for qualified teacher status (QTS).

University-based sessions will enable you to reflect on teaching methods.

You will be given the opportunity to develop your own teaching style, to set personal targets, to demonstrate initiative and to evaluate your work in planning, teaching and assessing.

We will help you to transform your subject knowledge into teaching skills and educational theory into practice.

University tutors have particular subject expertise as successful teachers and also examiners for major boards at GCSE and A-level. You will be taught by a teaching team with a nationally recognised reputation for research, teaching and publications in business education.

We also use the expertise of experienced teachers from our partnership schools to complement the teaching of University-based sessions. This includes sessions led by subject mentors, who will help you develop your subject knowledge and provide advice about teaching methods. The University-based sessions will give you creative and innovative ideas to take into the classroom.

• Our PGCEs are rated `Outstanding' by Ofsted (2019), and we have been judged best university provider of initial teacher training in the North of England (Good Teacher Training Guide 2017).
• We have links with more than 200 schools, academies and colleges, and you will benefit from significant school-based teaching experience.
• Our leading experts in education have trained more than 5,000 teachers in the last 15 years.
• Our students come from all over the globe, and are from a variety of backgrounds - from recent graduates to mature learners.
• Our research improves the quality of education across the world, with 78% of our activity defined as `world-leading' or `internationally excellent' (Research Excellence Framework 2014).

The structure of our PGCEs includes both school-based and university-based learning.

On our secondary PGCEs, around two-thirds of your time will be spent in secondary schools, academies and colleges on placements.

The course is run in partnership with schools and colleges drawn from a wide area, including Bolton, Bury, Cheshire, Deeside, Lancashire, Manchester, Merseyside, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Staffordshire, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Warrington and Wigan.

The University's partnership schools are highly committed to giving you the best possible experience whilst you are on your school placements, giving you the opportunity to put into practice all the knowledge you have acquired from sessions held at the University.

When on placement, you will observe and teach classes under the guidance of an experienced teacher. You will also have a mentor to help you to plan lessons, deal with marking and assessment, and improve your teaching skills.

Peer observations of lessons will enable you to participate actively in your own and your fellow students' development as teachers. You will be provided with a significant amount of responsibility to develop your own teaching style, set targets, take your own initiatives and evaluate your own work in planning, teaching and assessing.

Your remaining time will be spent at the University, for example in lectures and seminars, and in subject-specific groups.

We will support your training to become a secondary school teacher by providing:

• a quality teaching experience in our partner schools and colleges;
• a study of current, challenging educational issues;
• careers planning and early professional development;
• guidance and support from experienced tutors and mentors;
• opportunities for reflective practice and research.

As a guide, you should anticipate that time in university-based learning combined with school-based placements will roughly equate to the time commitment of a full-time job, with additional time required in evenings and weekends for background reading, lesson planning and completing written assignments.

Your school and University experiences are formally assessed. Both your mentors and tutors will help you to record your achievements and set targets.

During each placement, a University tutor will observe you teach, and at the end of each school experience, you will receive a report from your mentor. The report will grade you in the following areas:  

• teaching;
• planning;
• differentiation and assessment;
• learning environment;
• wider professional responsibilities.

The grades are awarded by your mentor in conjunction with your University tutor. These reports, together with your record of achievement and development, facilitate your progression as a teacher.

The written assignments will allow you to gain a maximum of 60 master's-level credits, and guidance and support to complete these assignments will be available from your University tutors.

The course is taught by the Manchester Institute of Education (MIE), which has its own Undergraduate Hub. Here you will find all of your teaching staff and support staff. It is also a place to relax with fellow students.

MIE is located in the University's Ellen Wilkinson building, which is centrally located on the University's Oxford Road campus, close to the Main Library, Alan Gilbert Learning Commons and the Students Union.