Post Compulsory Education - Professional Graduate Certificate in Education

• Learn through taught sessions and professional practice, applying theory to your teaching practice to develop the core skills for teaching in post compulsory education
• Build on your expertise and experience in your field to develop your teaching skills
• Gain a qualification that includes recommendation for Qualified Teacher: Learning and Skills status (QTLS) opening up employment opportunities in a range of settings from schools and FE colleges to universities, prisons, business and the voluntary sector, and which provides a base for further personal and professional development
• Develop your ability to understand and work with professional, organisational and policy change
• Explore issues in teaching, learning and assessment
• Benefit from a qualification that is quality assured by the Institute for Learning (IfL) endorsed by the Learning and Skills Improvement Services (LSIS) as a Diploma in Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector (DTLLS) and can be used to achieve Qualified Teacher: Learning and Skills status (QTLS)

• Planning and preparing for teaching and learning
• Teaching and learning process
• Assessment and evaluation
• Professional practice and skills
• Theories and principles of inclusive Learning and teaching
• Researching practice
• Context - Curriculum design and innovation
• Professional practice and development

The course adopts a submission based approach, making effective use of a submission proposal process, which enables you to contextualise the outcomes and ensures their relevance to your own professional practice.

There are regular teaching observations and individual target setting will be used to ensure that you are you are making progress towards achieving the required professional standards.

Assessments include portfolios, reports, essays, presentations, teaching observations, practical tasks and teaching materials.

For this course you must:

• Be engaged in teaching in post-compulsory (i.e. Further, Higher or Adult) education for at least 50 hours per year.
• Be qualified in the content of the material being taught (usually holding a first degree in that subject)
• Be able to communicate clearly in spoken and written standard English, and demonstrate appropriate skills in numeracy (QCF level 2). The simplest way of showing this is a pass at Grade C or above in GCSE English and Mathematics, but other accredited evidence from a recognised awarding body is equally acceptable, providing that you can demonstrate their equivalence at interview.
• You need to bring documentary evidence with you to your interview.

If documentary evidence is not available, you will be asked to undertake a skills test.

You might in any case find it useful to do such a test if you have been out of formal education (in a student role, of course) for some time. You may have to undertake a similar test for QTLS, and we would not want anyone to be too distracted by having to work too hard to meet the grade for that.

• You must not have been previously excluded from teaching or working with young people.
• If you are planning or applying to work with young people under 18 (under Eligibility Code 04) your employer will need to seek DBS clearance, although under some circumstances you may be liable for the fee.

This course is primarily ‘in-service’ (although a pre-service route is available at certain locations), which means that all participants will already be employed in a teaching role within the post compulsory sector. 

QTLS is now required of all new teachers in state-funded further education. It is available not only to new entrants to teaching, but also to established staff who do not hold a recognised teaching qualification, as a portal to promotion and advancement.

You will be challenged to explore theories of teaching and learning and to examine the implications of such theories for your own development. In doing this you will refine, form and reform your own principles, perspectives and values in relation to professional teaching practice.