Postgraduate Certificate in Education
one- or two-year higher education course in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
The Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE/PGCertEd) is a one- or two-year higher education course in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and South Africa which provides training in order to allow graduates to become teachers within maintained schools. In England, there are two routes available to gaining a PGCE: either on a traditional university-led teacher training course or school-led teacher training. In South Africa – where it can take up to three years – the PGCE degree is one of only two ways to become a teacher, with the other being a Bachelor of Education degree. In some academic institutions a Postgraduate Award (PGA) can qualify for a PGCert as a degree above a bachelor's degree.
In addition to gaining the PGCE qualification itself, those who have successfully completed the course in England or Wales are recommended for qualified teacher status (QTS) – the requirement to teach in state maintained schools in England and Wales. Those passing PGCEs in Northern Ireland are granted "eligibility to teach" in Northern Ireland (equivalent to QTS). Though the QTS/eligibility to teach applies in only the home nation in which it was awarded, applying for QTS/eligibility to teach in either of the other two home nations is a formality, and is nearly always awarded to PGCE holders. Furthermore, the PGCE is also widely recognised in Scotland, allowing holders to register easily as teachers there.
The PGCE was previously also offered in Scotland, but was renamed the Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) from 2005 to 2006 (the exact year depending on the university offering it). It is identical in content to the previous PGCE.
Applications for admission to PGCE courses are handled by UCAS Teacher Training.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Postgraduate Certificate in Education” is one- or two-year higher education course in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Postgraduate, Certificate and Education, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Postgraduate Certificate in Education” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.