Just thinking about when I applied to do a PGCE
I don’t really want to go on about this but for some reason I feel compelled to, it’s something to do with gaining a degree then a few years later qualifying to teach, that’s about it. I have been contented as someone who has been out of the workplace for many years and I love my family dearly but this is still a part of me.
In the summer of 2002 I was struggling to find employment, I was a bachelor of science in business information technology, I had taught in Asia for about four years and I was 34 years old and married with a young daughter. By chance I heard they were offering bursaries to train to teach so I thought it may be an option, I didn’t think much of my chances in primary or secondary education because I’d been out of the country for a while and I had a mental health condition but that said it had always been a plan to return home to the UK after all this was my home as far as I was concerned. There was another option, teaching in further education, the prospective students were recruited directly by the university and they would be teaching young adults so I felt I had a better chance. At that time they were also offering a £6,000 bursary a £4,500 student loan and the course was paid for as well, I thought about my degree being business and IT but I saw that there was an option teaching English for speakers of other languages and I really felt this would be a blue chip option as I had taught in Asia for several years already, a full PGCE in post-complusory education and training specialising in English for speakers of other languages, surely that would be quite something.
I was offered an interview at Greenwich University so I took the National Express up to London from my home town of Barnstaple which took about 5 hours, leaving at about 5 in the morning, I crossed London on the underground and docklands light railway and arrived in Greenwich a few minutes late for my appointment, I sat down to an entrance test and then an interview followed by another interview, I remember being quite awe struck by the building it was The Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich built by Sir Christopher Wren in the 17th century and a UNESCO World Heritage Site also sitting on the Prime Meridian but I didn’t know any of that at the time, the university had only taken the building over from The Royal Navy about two years earlier.
I took the coach home again that evening getting back to barnstaple at about 11PM, I then waited. a few weeks went by and I heard nothing, I enquired about my application and then I was given the offer, I approached Devon LEA for funding and was given full funding, my mother took me up to London in September and I moved into halls of residence in Grand Depot Road Woolwich which was also shared with students from Trinity Music College.
A funny fact I found some years later when I was trying to ascertain if my qualification had any value was that officers in the Adjutant’s General Corps would study the same course at Southampton University for 18 months and gain the rank of Captain, probably along with the lawyers and doctors pretty much the highest level in the army I would have thought.
A funny footnote, I did go on to pass the course at masters level and successfully teach for a few years, in fact I was four levels up the lecturer scale when I resigned, years later I was in my local Weatherspoons and I saw a plaque on the wall about Sir Francis Chichester and his circumnavigation of the globe in 1968, he came from Barnstaple, I looked it up on Wikipedia and it said he was knighted by the Queen on the steps of The Old Royal Naval College in 1968, I remembered how I used to sit on a public bench near the Cutty Sark and call my wife in Thailand when I had some free time and I would notice this little boat that looked like someone had just left it there on the dock and if I’m not mistaken that was his boat that he circumnavigated the globe in in 1968, it was funny to think I came from the same small town in Devon.
