to plan to be pregnant while pursuing a pgce in primary education

[giggles123]

Hi, does anybody know of anyone out there who has attempted a pgce programme while pregnant. Plan is to deliver in the summer so conveniently after the baby is born. Please kindly respond.

[abenstille]

I did a pgce and no way would i have got through it pregnant. Maybe do it poart time over 2 years?

[overmydeadbody]

I fell pregnant while on my PGCE, and no way would I recommend actually planning on being pregnant while doing a PGCE.

I was exhausted, I managed to finish the PGCE, but you cannot plan these things. You may be due in the summer (like I was) but what if your baby comes early?(my DS was premature, born at 30 weeks) sO i had to take time off, I had to finish my PGCE the next year with a baby (who I BF in the staffroom of my placement sachool at breaktime and lunchtime) and then I ended up not working as an NQT straight away as I wanted to be a sahm while DS was young. And when I started looking for work it was even harder as I'd had some years off.


Don't do it. ither start your family now, and do the PGCE in three or more years time, or do the PGCE, do the NQT year (if you're luky enough to find a job that is, they are few and far between these days) and then have a baby.

[emptyshell]

PGCE year is brutal (I found NQT much much easier despite a bullying head). Not only the workload/planning and the like - but the shortages of placement schools often meaning pretty grotty commutes, and the other factor - the sheer barrage of germs hitting your immune system (which takes a while to develop the teacher immunity that means most old hands rarely get ill in term time.... but will spend every arsing half term horizontal coughing/puking/sneezing their guts up in bed).

Plus if you take a break before doing NQT induction (the induction clock starts ticking from the first day you work as a teacher - even if it's just a day's supply, so you're ok as long as you don't start) you're going to be up against the new batch of NQTs fresh off their PGCE with the latest shiny new training ideas and the like - and it might make things rougher for you to find a job (primary's pretty hard to get a decent post in at the moment). I'd wait and go through the full PGCE > NQT system in one go later on.

[leeloo1]

I had a friend who fell pregnant during the PGCE (Early Years) year - she was around 8 months when we graduated. She found the final placement hard work, but overall coped. The tutors and teachers were supportive, although she didn't get on with her placement partner which didn't help.

Perhaps it depends which Uni you go to and I also think it depends what you're used to but, whilst the PGCE was hugely enjoyable and challenging, I didn't find it that hard after working fulltime in a stressful career - there were many weeks in college where I had so much free time I didn't know what to do with myself and ended up doing things like typing up my lecture notes to feel 'busy'. But... I was used to working with computers (people who weren't found it much harder), used to studying (albeit I'd finished my MA 5 years earlier), used to working hard at a 'profession' (again some people straight from Uni who weren't used to being in a professional workplace really struggled - and 2 of them ended up failing and needing to re-do placements), and determined to do well so I was very organised (use colour coded timetables, lesson plans and organise your placement folders neatly - the teachers/tutors were bizarrely impressed).

Sorry that sounds like I'm full of myself, but I just think I was in the right place to do well in the PGCE and possibly could have coped with being pregnant as well, but only you know what place you're in and how much support you have?! I'd second that the NQT year was much, much harder than the PGCE (I was in an inner London school, whereas my teaching practices were more rural ones) and more stressful and I definitely couldn't have coped with being pregnant too - but you have 4 years to complete your NQT year after graduating (or you did when I qualified).

Also, I went into teaching partly because of the family friendly aspect, but decided not to go back to my job after my maternity leave. I'm now childminding and being a teacher is a real selling point, so my PGCE wasn't wasted and I do see myself going back into teaching in the future.

[giggles123]

Thank you all. I think I'll wait to get the course out of the way before getting pg.

[Kitesurfgirl]

Don't do it. I've been pregnant for the whole of my final placement. I've had to drive 2 hours each way to the school (hence getting up at 5am) and I don't finish work til 10pm at night. This pcge course has been an absolute killer. Literally. I've just lost my baby at 4 months. Devastated doesn't even begin to cover how I feel. I'm blaming the school, the horrendous kids, the lack of sleep, lack of rest time and everything else you can think of. I can't believe I didn't put the health of my baby before the stress of my placement. I've only been given 2 weeks off to grieve, and now I have to go back and do ANOTHER 3-4 week placement to replace the final 2 weeks I've missed of my last placement (because they won't let me go back to my school because of where they now are in the timetable etc....says it won't show fluidity) . So I don't even get time to grieve before I have to jump through a load more hoops. I'm 37 and have worked in stressful jobs before coming into teaching. It's not so much that the work is hard, its the sheer volume of paperwork and constant justifying that wrecks any chance of a life you have. Prepare to put your LIFE and definitely social life on hold for an entire year. I would not recommend that ANYONE does a Pgce pregnant. I lost my baby. Isn't that enough proof? :(