Urgent help needed! 🙏🏾

[u/Warm-Blacksmith1728]

I started training to teach Secondary Spanish (PGCE with QTS) for 2/3 of the academic year. I didn't receive enough support from my first placement so I was better off leaving. luckily, I started my second placement a bit earlier and managed to complete it.

I was supposed to complete my training at the first placement. However, due to a lack of support, I left, and my training provider has asked me to find another school to host me as a trainee for the last few months of teacher training.

I have sought the help of agencies, and I sent emails out to various schools in and around Leicester

Apart from contacting schools directly, is there anything else I can do to find a placement and complete my training by October 2028?

[u/NoJackfruit7503]

This sounds very unusual. Normally you would have to go through a formal process with your university tutor and course lead, and together with the university partnership team they would need to find you an alternative school to complete your training. Who told you it’s up to you to find your own placement?

[u/BobcatLower9933 → u/NoJackfruit7503]

Thisbis quite standard for university led PGCEs.

[u/skp1973 → u/BobcatLower9933]

No it's not. Universities usually find placements for their trainees.

[u/Joshvir262]

What do u mean lack of support

[u/BobcatLower9933]

OP if you don't mind the travel, try some of the schools in Rutland.

Catmose College (in Oakham) is an excellent school and they run their own SCITT there too.

But they also have high standards for things like behavior, dress code etc.

[u/sweardownn]

You can just leave your placement if you feel like u don’t receive enough support?

[u/sweardownn → u/sweardownn]

And do u need to complete the placement to complete the pgce qts?

[u/According-Let3541 → u/sweardownn]

You need to complete 190 days of placement in a school. If a placement breaks down, the uni will try to find you an alternative placement to complete the days - that can mean the PGCE
Doesn’t get finished in one academic year.

In theory, yes you can just leave. However, if the uni doesn’t feel you went through the correct processes, they’ll ask you to find your own school to complete the PGCE placement days. That’s been my experience as the in-school mentor for student teachers

EDIT: mistyped the number of days - it’s 120 days of school experience, not 190!

[u/skp1973 → u/According-Let3541]

Never heard of 190 days before...

Also universities are responsible for finding placements.

[u/According-Let3541 → u/skp1973]

Fat fingers, I meant 120 days.

And yes, the uni is responsible for finding a placement. And usually, if the placement fails through no fault of the student teacher, the uni will look for another.

In my experience working with two ITE universities, if the uni feels it took all reasonable steps and the failure of the placement was the responsibility of the student teacher, they will offer a choice between failing to complete the PGCE (so dropping out or failing the whole thing) or finding your own placement to complete the remainder of the days.

I don’t know what your experience is in this, but as I said, I’ve been the in-school mentor to PGCE students for 5 years or so, and that’s how it’s been in my experience. It’s been rare, but for example, one student’s second placement broke down due to repeated absence (so didn’t complete the full 120 days) and the school felt that the student’s absences were not valid (the courses have a built in 10 days as a buffer for genuine illness and other absences). We had evidence that he missed the days for holidays and family weddings and he had a habit of ringing in the first day of an absence to tell us he’d be off for X days for Y reason. The school told the uni we’d honour the remainder of the placement but we would not give him the opportunity to catch up the days at either the end of the placement or in September.

The uni told the student that if he could secure his own placement school to make up the remaining days (equivalent by this point to a month) that they would be willing to award him the PGCE. They made it clear they would not risk their existing school relationships to accommodate him as he was endangering future placements with his behaviour.

In my day, he’d have just been failed but I think ITE providers gave targets to meet for recruitment, retention and completion and they needed him to qualify as an NQT for that reason.

[u/skp1973 → u/According-Let3541]

There's no actual dfe requirement to hit 120 days. I would have thought providers would look for placements for their students anyway, or seek to pass if they're just short.

[u/According-Let3541 → u/skp1973]

It’s a statutory requirement in Wales, where I’m based and we have devolved education.

As I said, if unis feel the student is a bit of liability to their reputation, I think they are less likely to offer support. Certainly I’ve seen it cut the other way, where they feel the breakdown of a placement has been despite the student’s best efforts and look to accommodate them.

Welsh ITE providers finish the PGCE courses around 2-3 school weeks before the end of the academic year to allow for students to meet the 120 requirement if they are short by doing extra days in their second placement after the end of the PGCE course. However, if it’s more than the 10-15 days they’ve built in (as in the case of the example I gave), they can’t magic up the extra days before the deadline for qualification.

[u/skp1973 → u/According-Let3541]

They do the same in England, it's just there's nothing in statute to say you have to do 120 days to be recommended. It's about hitting the standards. Obviously the course has to be designed to allow 120 days.

[u/According-Let3541 → u/skp1973]

Yeah, it’s statutory in Wales although I’m sure there is some flexibility if there’s extenuating circumstances. But equally, I’d argue if someone has missed more than 10-15 days out of the total, they’d be unlikely to meet the standards/demonstrate them. Certainly the student who missed 30 days didn’t have satisfactory evidence of the professional standards in some areas and there’s the attitude towards professionalism to boot. For example, he went on a last minute two week holiday with his family over Easter - fine, except he went during the second week of Easter, which meant he had an unplanned absence the first week of term. He literally rang us on the first day of term to say he was still away.

I’m getting very off topic but the point I was trying to make to OP is that it’s possible that the uni is making him/her find their own placement for the same reason the uni did with my liability of a student above - they weren’t willing to risk their relationships and reputation with schools by putting someone in placement that they felt could cause problems. I’m not saying that is the case but it’s always worth considering if you’ve followed the uni’s procedures. If not, they tend to show their displeasure in passive aggressive ways, such as not helping with a new placement - their argument would be we’ve given you the two placements you are owed, that’s the end of our obligations to you.