Get School Experience
SWIFT works with the Department for Education and our campus schools to enable you to get school experience. This allows you to learn more about teaching by visiting a school local to you. These visits will help you decide if you would like to train to teach, discover which setting you’d prefer (primary or secondary) and build a relationship with a school you may like to work in later. Different schools will offer different lengths of school experience, from half a day, to a day or longer.
Your experience may include:
You can request school experience if you are over the age of 18, have a degree or studying for one, have the right to work in the UK.
If you would like to apply for school experience please contact us using the link below.
Your experience may include:
- Tour of the school
- Observe a tutor group
- Lesson observations in your chosen subject
- Interacting with pupils
- Meet teachers and Heads of Department
- Learn what it is like to be a teacher day to day
- Speak to current trainees
- Find out about career opportunities
- Hear about routes into teaching
- Advice on applying for teacher training
You can request school experience if you are over the age of 18, have a degree or studying for one, have the right to work in the UK.
If you would like to apply for school experience please contact us using the link below.
Quote from Bethan Harker, who completed a Get School Experience at Kingsbridge Community College (KCC)
Having worked for 25 years in a range of different jobs, including youth and community work, I felt ready to try my hand at teaching in a Secondary School. I really wanted to use my degree and engage in learning again after such a long time out of education. I felt that I had some great transferable skills to offer and was ready for the challenge of teaching. Despite this, I was clueless about what the inside of a school was like, what the national curriculum entailed or how students were supposed to learn. My only experience was of my own schooling, back in the 1990's.
Having taken the plunge and applied for a PGCE I decided to make use of the Government Get School Experience service. It was a very easy process to follow, and Swift quickly responded and linked me with the Geography Team at my chosen school KCC. I had a very insightful experience, where I could palpably feel the pace of the school day, the style of the lessons, the topics covered, glimpse the complexities of managing a group of 30 students and provide me the golden opportunity to speak with teachers and ask some pertinent questions.
Off the back of this experience, I whole-heartedly followed through with the decision to pursue a PGCE and find myself completing my year of training this week. This has been a huge achievement for me and luckily, I was placed with KCC for my long school placement.
Having worked for 25 years in a range of different jobs, including youth and community work, I felt ready to try my hand at teaching in a Secondary School. I really wanted to use my degree and engage in learning again after such a long time out of education. I felt that I had some great transferable skills to offer and was ready for the challenge of teaching. Despite this, I was clueless about what the inside of a school was like, what the national curriculum entailed or how students were supposed to learn. My only experience was of my own schooling, back in the 1990's.
Having taken the plunge and applied for a PGCE I decided to make use of the Government Get School Experience service. It was a very easy process to follow, and Swift quickly responded and linked me with the Geography Team at my chosen school KCC. I had a very insightful experience, where I could palpably feel the pace of the school day, the style of the lessons, the topics covered, glimpse the complexities of managing a group of 30 students and provide me the golden opportunity to speak with teachers and ask some pertinent questions.
Off the back of this experience, I whole-heartedly followed through with the decision to pursue a PGCE and find myself completing my year of training this week. This has been a huge achievement for me and luckily, I was placed with KCC for my long school placement.
