Partnerships bring mutual benefit to the University, our students and our partner schools and colleges. They reinforce our commitment to the profession and improve standards of teaching. The continuing success of our Primary BEd and PGCE programmes has been possible thanks to the commitment, dedication and quality support and provision from our school partners.
As a partner school, you play a pivotal role in providing experiences to our student teachers which enhance our campus-based provision. This supports a rich and varied shared dialogue about effective practice in training teachers of the future.
In return we offer opportunities for practicing teachers to extend their professional development, and for young people in schools and settings to meet, be taught by, and learn from the skills, personal attributes and boundless enthusiasm of our student teachers.
Providing school experience to our student teachers
We have partner schools and settings across the region, and beyond, and we're always seeking to develop our capacity to provide high quality placements for school experience. We support our student teachers by training mentors in partners schools to develop their skills and promote high quality outcomes for student teachers and future teachers. Our recruitment process is rigorous and involves our partners.
Delivering quality training
Mentor training is free and combines high quality academic study with enhanced practical real-life situations. We'll negotiate when experienced members of our team can provide this training either:
- on campus at University of Plymouth (where both supply cover and travel costs are paid)
- delivered as INSET provision for a number of staff, or the whole team.
Working in partnership
Meeting regularly throughout the year at the University, our active Primary Partnership Working Group and Primary Partnership Programmes Committee discuss new initiatives to respond to the ever-changing and challenging way in which we all work. Our teacher training documents are regularly scrutinised by the Primary partnership Working Group and updated in response to evaluations from each school experience.
We send out partnership packs to schools each Spring. These contain a placement offer grid for you to complete and return to us. You can also download this form, along with others form the pack, below.
For help and advice, please contact the partnership office.
In-school experience
Settings-based experience is an integral part of all programmes, supporting the professional development of intending teachers and enabling them to become proficient to the standards required for QTS. We make sure this crucial element of learning is subject to the same quality assurance procedures as other programme components. All partners are also asked to contribute to this process. Teaching teams are required to:
- gather and analyse evaluative data on their work
- provide summary reports to their regulatory committees, together with identified targets for action to maintain and enhance quality.