Study alongside your work: you will attend St Mary's University one day a week whilst continuing to work with children and young people for at least half of the week.
Why study Primary Education (Work-Based Route)?
Working with children and young people in a primary setting is a challenging career, but is incredibly rewarding. This one-year course allows graduates of our Education in Context foundation degree to complete a Bachelor's degree.
Studying part-time whilst, at the same time, working within education provides you with a unique opportunity to apply your learning in a practical environment throughout the course.
Choosing the Work-Based Route to gain a Qualified Teacher Status meets the needs of distinctive areas of education - teaching, learning and pedagogy.
This part-time course allows you the unique opportunity to continue to work within the education sector whilst studying with us.
Why St Mary's?
Students on the course come from a range of settings including Primary and Early Years, special education needs and those working in faith and secular contexts and people special needs.
We have developed strong partnerships with a variety of schools including Catholic, other church and secular schools. Colleagues from these schools are involved in selecting students and supporting them through school experience. They also contribute to University-based modules.
St Mary's also offers two work-based degree courses that lead to the award of Qualified Teacher Status (QTS):
Teaching methods
The course is taught using a range of teaching methods:
- Presentations
- Discussions
- Small group work
- Observations
- Practical-based activities
You are expected to bring your own work experiences into the discussions and to relate this to the academic theories to which you will be introduced.
A virtual learning environment will support you throughout the course with an appropriate range of resources.
Assessment methods
All work is assessed by means of a course portfolio, which may include presentations and research undertaken at your place of work. Work-based school experience will be assessed through observations and the completion of a QTS portfolio.
Key facts
- One year after graduating our education students are, on average, the second highest paid across the sector earning £3,300 more per year (on average) than the median salary. Five years after graduating this figure goes up to £6,100. (Department for Education LEO data, 2017)
- Our Primary Initial Teacher Education courses are judged by Ofsted as ‘outstanding’ - the highest grade attainable in an Ofsted inspection.
- Each module is delivered by specialists with a background in the primary classroom
- You will be taught on our historic Strawberry Hill campus one day a week