Doing my teacher training many years ago

Studying for a PGCE in my 30s

I passed a degree in my mid-twenties and then several years later I found the opportunity to train to teach with a PGCE in post-compulsory education and training at The Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, one of the campuses of the University of Greenwich, also the home of Trinity School of Music and a popular visitor attraction as a UNESCO world heritage site it attracts about a million tourists a years, more recently it has also been reckoned to be the best film set in the world.

I can say that I applied from my home town of Barnstaple in Devon in the summer of 2002 when I was 34 years old, I took the coach up to London, crossed London to Greenwich and arrived a bit late for my interview, I then had two interviews and an entrance test, plus handed in an essay I’d already been asked to write as part of the assessment criteria. I also needed occupational health screening and enhanced criminal record checks. I would be studying partly at postgraduate level with about half the course being postgraduate. The school of post-compulsory education and training used to be Garnett College, which merged with Thames Polytechnic in the 1980s which later became the University of Greenwich. The course was 1,200 hours long with 120 hours of teaching practice including four assessed one hour teaching visits, one of which was from an external moderator, there was about 15,000 words in essays and 130 hours of lectures, I think it was really quite something.

I did my teaching practice during the PGCE at South Thames college both at Tooting Broadway and Putney, I taught on a range of English for speakers of other languages courses, many for immigrants and some for students from other countries, I lived in halls of residence in Woolwich with many students including students from Trinity. I passed my PGCE in 2003 and applied for a job at Hammersmith and West London College, I got the job as a lecturer in business communication.

I taught IELTS, key skills communication, Btec first in business, HND organisational behaviour and I was also a tutor. I started three levels up the qualified lecturer scale and worked there for two years, after the end of the first year I had completed my probation and was employed full time four levels up the lecturer scale. I was 36 years old and I think it was a reasonably good achievement but as many people will know the cost of accommodation in London was and is really high and I think the follow on consequence is that quality of life is relatively low which it certainly was in my case.

I started off in a shared flat without a living room, it had four bedrooms and a gally kitchen, I shared it with four other people, I then found a studio flat where I lived for the next 18 months but it took most of my net salary to live there, so much so that even affording a car wouldn’t have been possible, is that fair I would ask myself and after three years of teaching in London and a total of about seven years teaching in total and eight years of university education I just felt really dissatisfied and let down. Luckily I had the love of a good wife and children and the love of a strong mother and brother otherwise I’m not sure what would have become of me.