PGCE Secondary Music

University of East London

This one-year Postgraduate course qualifies you to be a Secondary teacher of Music in England and Wales. The University of East London’s Postgraduate Music education is unique. UEL’s bespoke Music education provision is a pioneer amongst teacher education providers as it remains alert to incoming events, being both proactive and reactive in ‘real time’. Throughout the course there remains a strong emphasis on the maintenance and development of your individual musical identity, personality and musicianship. This is nurtured through the provision of expert practitioner support with musicological and focussed academic guidance.We will support you to develop as a great music teacher who can bring the subject to life by devising and delivering a diverse range of engaging lessons that educate and excite all pupils.The subject studies element of your training programme enables you to develop skills, knowledge and understanding of music in the secondary school context. You will learn how to devise and deliver lessons that creatively tackle the challenges of your subject. You will be guided by specialist tutors who have relevant teaching experience and who often contribute to educational research, policy and curriculum developments in your subject.The university-based training initially consists of weekly lectures on themes that are then developed in seminar groups. You will work both in subject-specific groups and in mixed-subject groups.We organise our training so that it feels like a school. We teach students mainly in small groups of 30 rather than in large lecture halls of 150 or 300 because it is important that you have plenty of time in your subject groups.The Secondary PGCE course at the University of East London was designed in 2001 in conjunction with the local authorities to address the secondary education teacher shortage in East London.The partnership works with input and support from the London Boroughs of Barking & Dagenham, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Waltham Forest and Redbridge.It means that our graduates are represented in virtually every secondary school in east London. Some are now deputy heads or in senior management roles in schools that are taking our current trainees for their placements.

Cass School of Education and Communities