Train to teach if you have a degree or are studying for one

You need a bachelor’s degree (in any subject) to teach in primary, secondary and special schools in England.

For secondary teacher training, your provider will want to make sure you have a good knowledge of the subject you’re applying to teach.

If you have a degree, you can do postgraduate teacher training to get qualified teacher status (QTS).

Teacher training courses usually take 9 months full-time, or 18 to 24 months part-time.

If you’re not from the UK, find out about training to teach in England as a non-UK citizen.

Teacher training course providers

Your postgraduate teacher training course might be provided by:

a university (sometimes referred to as university-led training)
a school or group of schools (sometimes referred to as school-led training, or an apprenticeship)
Teach First(opens in new window) (a charitable organisation)

Some providers are ‘accredited’ – this means they’ve been approved by the Department for Education (DfE) to run teacher training courses.

Providers who have not been accredited can also run courses if they’re in a partnership with an organisation that has. For example, you might see a school running a course that has a university as their ‘accredited provider’.

What does teacher training involve?

Postgraduate teacher training usually takes 9 months full-time, or 18 to 24 months part-time.

All teacher training involves mostly classroom placements with some theoretical learning.

This means that even if your course provider is a university, you will still do placements in schools. And if your course provider is a school, you might still do your theoretical learning in a university.

The important thing to remember is that regardless of your course provider, all teacher training involves around 120 days of school placements in at least 2 schools.

You can find out what to expect on your teacher training.

Where will my training take place?

Because all teacher training must involve placements in at least 2 schools, your training will not all happen in the same place. Some courses may also have a separate location for your theoretical learning.

Your course provider will probably not be able to confirm your exact placement locations until they’ve allocated all training places on their course. But you can talk to them beforehand to get an idea.