PGCE (Physics)

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025 places the University of Oxford’s Department of Education as first in Britain for Degrees in Education for the thirteenth year running. Over many years, it has consistently received the highest possible designation (Outstanding) from Ofsted in inspections. The University of Oxford’s Department of Education has a long history in initial teacher education, dating back to 1892.

The department works in partnership with over 37 secondary comprehensive schools in Oxfordshire and neighbouring counties, with most being within 30 miles of Oxford. The programme has been developed with colleagues from Oxfordshire partnership schools and covers the key professional skills of:

• lesson planning and preparation
• assessment, recording and reporting
• responding to individual learning needs
• classroom and behaviour management.

The course works on an internship model (the Oxford Internship Scheme) which recognises the different roles of university and schools in teacher education and the need for a truly collaborative partnership. Such collaboration involves joint responsibility within the partnership for the planning, delivery and assessment of the programme. Student teachers are known as interns during the PGCE course.

In addition to being awarded the PGCE qualification, successful interns are also recommended for Qualified Teacher Status, which indicates that they have met the requirements of the Government’s Teachers’ Standards.

The teaching of the sciences in state secondary schools is normally organised within a single science department or faculty to which teachers from the different sciences contribute their respective expertise. Such a structure is reflected in the Oxford department which, while actively recruiting for student teachers of the separate sciences – biology, chemistry and physics – works as a co-ordinated team of scientists.

The course aims to produce high quality teachers of the sciences across the 11-19 age range who will not only become competent teachers but will quickly become innovative leaders in their field. Interns will gain expertise in the different strategies for teaching science, and will get insights into the way that pupils learn across the whole range of attainments, aptitudes and pupil differences.

Interns will learn how to turn their own subject knowledge into a form that can be appreciated by pupils and will think critically about the aims and practicalities of teaching science in schools. To attain these goals, interns work with each other, the University tutors and their mentors in schools as adult learners, motivated to take responsibility for their own learning. The learning is structured through workshops, seminars, discussions, focussed assignments, school-based activities and sympathetic, expert, supervision and support.

There are opportunities to prepare science lessons, in particular, by trying out practical work both here in the department as well as in school. Between them the science tutors cover such subjects as biology, chemistry, physics, earth and environmental sciences. All have extensive experience of teaching and are involved in curriculum developments and research in science education at national and international level.

Rather than attempt to train all interns to teach in a particular way, we aim to build on your existing strengths – as good scientists and as mature, autonomous, motivated personalities – to help you teach in the way most suited to you and your school pupils.

The course aims to help you to:

• develop as a professional;
• explore your pre-conceptions about science and teaching science, and draw on your teaching experiences in a positive and reflective way;
• have opportunities to use research and academic study to inform your thinking and practice;
• learn how you can plan and teach engaging lessons which build on pupils’ prior knowledge and support them to become confident learners of science;
• organise and manage school science lessons which are safe and secure learning environments; and
• contribute to pupils’ understanding of science in society, citizenship and development of literacy and mathematical skills.

The course begins with an orientation experience in September spending three days in a primary school of your choice.

This is followed by the first week in the University of Oxford’s Department of Education. The rest of the autumn term is made up of joint weeks with two days spent in the University and three days in school. You will be attached to the same state secondary school for the majority of the year, which makes it possible for you to get to know teachers and pupils in the school and to understand the school’s policies and practices.

The spring term consists primarily of school experience and for the summer term, interns move to a second school so that they have the opportunity to consolidate and extend their understanding and experience of learning and teaching.

This course structure reflects the internship model in that it is designed to:

• enable interns to become fully integrated into one school over a long period;
• enable interns to learn about their own teaching in the context of the wider school, rather than focusing initially on their own classroom and only later widening their view;
• allow schools to offer coherent and challenging professional development programmes over the course of the long placement, and in the short placement focus on preparation for continuing professional development;
• enable school-based mentors to see interns’ development from the start of the course to a position of competence; and
• offer interns the opportunity to encounter a new school context at a time of the course when they are ready to make critical comparisons.