Taster courses are also lend themselves well to those applying from an under-represented sector in the teaching field, for example, male teachers within primary schools, people with disabilities and those from minority ethnic backgrounds.

The purpose of the taster courses is to give an insight into the teaching premise and do not count towards any of the ITT programme, but are considered useful experience.

The Open University offer a Welsh version called ‘prepare to teach’ programme which work in a similar fashion.
By calling the Teacher Training Line, you will be able to find the closest taster course in your region – their number is 0845 6000 991.

There are paid roles for classroom assistants within schools, but the availability of these could be few and far between as these roles may already be filled by part time employees. Should there be no paid jobs available, then one of the best solutions is to volunteer your services to the school. Not only will this look good on your CV when you come to apply for a permanent position when fully trained, but it frees up the school’s budget spend on classroom assistants, which will mean you could be given a longer period of stay at the school, thus gaining more experience.

There are also opportunities available on the Open Schools programme, who can be contacted on 0845 6000 991 and will provide a structured schemes for you to attend. Again – these are very sort after, and places are given on a first come, first served basis.

Similar alternatives to consider, to gauge how well you will work with children is to join the Guides or Scouts as a volunteer, or help out at a local sports or youth club.

All these will put you in good environments to help develop your skills with kids, all contributing towards the teaching career you want.

Initial Teacher Training for the undergraduate (ITT) allows the candidate to study a degree at the same time as entering the teacher training programme. These include:

Bachelor of education (BEd), an honours degree combining the qualified teacher status (QTS) when passed. Full time courses run for three to four years, but can be reduced to two years if credits have been achieved as an undergraduate in previous studies.

BA/BSc with QT. A bachelor of arts (BA) or bachelor of science (BSc) degree which achieve qualified teacher status (QTS) upon completion. Again, these placements take between three to four years as a full time course, or are available as part time courses over six years.

Postgraduate initial teacher training allows those already with their first degree completed, to enter in to a training programme while working within a school, this gaining experience along the way. There is also the opportunity at this point to enter into School-centred initial teacher training (SCITT), where the training programme is complete on school premises, giving the opportunity to work directly with the chosen faculty.

For more details on the courses above, contact your nearest further education centre, who will advise on suitability of course and which length of course would be fit your proposed progression.

Key stage 1 – ages four to six year olds
Key stage 2 – ages six to eleven year olds
Key stage 3 – ages eleven to fourteen year olds
Key stage 4 – ages fourteen to sixteen year olds

Each teacher will go through the training for a minimum of two out of the four key stages, usually covering two key stages which are taught at the same level, either Primary of Secondary. When teaching at a Secondary level, there is a greater opportunity to expand the teaching topics, here are a few pointers to help guide you:

- The norm is to select two subjects from the national curriculum to specialize in, which your degree should be relevant to.
- When choosing to teach languages it is recommended to train in two differing languages, with popular first choices being European languages like Spanish, French or German, then the second being a community language like Hindi or Mandarin.
- When considering teaching sciences at a secondary level, there are specific enhancement courses available that combine with the initial teacher training (ITT) programme, to allow the potential teacher to further develop the techniques in that topic.

For primary school teaching, you will be working with children aged three up to eleven, who are to be taught all aspects of the national curriculum to stages one and two. Stage 1 pupils fall within the aged three to six years old and stage 2 pupils are from six to eleven years old. As well as having a basic good knowledge of the following subjects, a degree is required to enter the ITT.

The core subjects are Maths, English, Science and Welsh (if you are training in Wales)
The non-core foundation topics range from Design and Technology, Information Technology, Geography, History, Art and Design, Music, Physical Education and Foreign Languages.

All stage 2 pupils across England are now entitled to study and learn a foreign language which now gives the primary school teacher the opportunity to specialise in modern languages.

To achieve this you must understand the procedures and policies that have been designed for prospective and current teachers to gain and develop skills, knowledge and behaviour to perform the tasks at hand.
When the decision has been made to enter into teaching as a career, you should seek out the relevant courses of initial teacher training which form a pre-service course to complete before venturing in to a functioning classroom in the community.

There then follows an induction course which will run alongside your first placement at a school or teaching post. The induction process allows the trainee to experience the day to day interaction with students while under the supervision of a qualified teacher, who shadows the inductee for anywhere between one to three years.

This is dependent on the type of education centre selected, as differing sectors have differing requirements. The faculty will also have specific requirements for the lengths of induction programmes, which depend on the size of classes and total faculty population.

On completion of induction, the classroom will become your territory and from there the CPD (continual professional development) of the teaching role. This programme will be monitored by the faculty and applies to all practising teachers.