PGCE (Geography)
The Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) is a one-year course that offers you the opportunity to train to teach the secondary age group in one of the leading educational establishments in the country.
Admission via UK Government's Department for Education. See PGCE webpage for vacancies and deadlines.
- Expected length:
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- Full time: 12 months
- Expected start date:
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- Full time:
- English language level:
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- Higher level required
About the course
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025 places the University of Oxford’s Department of Education as first in the UK 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.
Learning to become a geography teacher at Oxford is challenging, stimulating, very rewarding and thoroughly enjoyable. The subject naturally lends itself to a huge range of pupil learning activities, both in the classroom and in the field, and most interns find this diversity one of its attractions.
The main aims of the geography course are to provide the foundations for you to become an inspiring and effective geography teacher of young people who now find themselves living in a fast-changing world, and to quickly become innovative leaders in the field.
Central to the course is the basic tenet that all young people, regardless of social class, race, ethnicity, gender or ability can learn and enjoy geography, and that geography, as a discipline, has a significant contribution to make to the broader aims of education.
The idea of subject is central to the design of the course and we encourage you to engage critically with ongoing policy and academic debates about what kinds of geographies are fit for a 21st century education system.
It follows that, by the end of the course, you should:
- be competent in the skills of teaching geography, as specified in the Standards for the award of Qualified Teacher Status;
- understand the contribution that you as a geography teacher can make to the education of pupils in the widest sense; and
- be able to take responsibility for your continuing professional development.
The course consists of an integrated programme of lesson observations, school-based activities, teaching and reflection in school and university workshops, lectures, tutorials and fieldwork. In school you will begin by working with teachers and small groups of pupils. As your confidence grows, you will plan and teach lessons with a class teacher and with other interns, sometimes working with a group of pupils, sometimes with a whole class.
In the University, you will work with the other geography interns, and with the geography education tutors. You will be expected to read and to think about teaching in a critical and theoretical way, taking account of your own ideas about the sort of teacher you would like to be.
You will be able to make a real difference to pupils, fostering their learning of the important issues which shape the future.
All geography interns gain fieldwork experience in their schools and during a weekend residential course at a Field Studies Council Centre; the practicalities of organising such trips are explored in departmental sessions.
Course structure
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.
Core components
You will undertake two interrelated course components: curriculum subject work and the professional development programme (PDP). You will also complete two written assignments.
Course details
Entry requirements
For entry in 2026-27