Can anyone who has done a BEd in education or similar, tell me about workload hours etc ?

[NuttyMuffins]

I am thinking of doing an access to teaching course (part time over 2 years), and then a BEd in Early Primray Education, but have no idea of the kind of workload or amount of time spent in uni a BEd requires.

The course states that you will have placements during schools and the length of placement would increase as the course went along and obviously those will be diring achool hours, but what about lectures ??

Sorry meant to add that, I have looked on the TES site, but the majority of students on there are doing or have done pgces instead.

I did a 4 year BEd (think it's only 3 now). It is quite a lot of hard work - I would say that we had roughly 3 full days of lectures a week and then every year a teaching practice in a school - the first was 2 weeks with other students in the class and teacher supervision, the second was 2 weeks on our own with some teacher supervision - I think the 3rd was 3 weeks and the final was 4 weeks with about 80% teaching on our own. During the TPs we didn't have any lectures but had a visiting tutor. You always have a number of assignments to hand in at the end of each term but you also get a considerable amount of holiday. - my degree was modular and I had to pick 2 areas to specialize in - I majored in English and minored in History. A lot of it was at our level so that we had sufficient subject knowledge but some modules were classroom application ones. I went on to teach KS1.

As I said - it is hard work but the upside is that when you go into teaching full time it actually seems a little easier.

I would definitely recommend it - I really enjoyed doing it and once you're into it, it's nothing you can't handle, ifyswim.

Thanks for that, very helpful.

Dixd you more or less get the same uni holidays as school holidays or alot less ?? Have 3 dc's so this is something i need to consider.

Plus, you mentioned there about doing major in english and minor in history, but on this particular course i am looking at, it doesn't say anything about specialising in a certain subject. Are some BEd's different or am i missing a bit of info ?

this is the course i want to do.

I did my degree a while ago now ('89 - '93)
It was 4 years of 9 - 5, 5 days a week. We did a BA(Ed)(Hons) at Exeter so we basically did a History Degree (the BA bit) and a BEd (the Ed bit) alongside eachother.
I did Teaching practice for 3 weeks in year 1, 5 weeks in year 2, one day a week for a term in Year 3 and 10 weeks in Year 4.
It was full on. But I still managed to spend a lot of time in the Pub ... there were a number of 'mature' (sorry) students on my course who had done Access and had dcs ... they didn't go to the pub and went home and they all did better than us young drunkards
HTH

LOL Ghosty, sounds fab.

I could do the access course in one yr but i still want to be avaible for ds's workshop days, assemblies etc when he starts reception, so am going to opt for the 2 yr part time course instead. So i wouldn't start uni until 09 and my kids would then be nearly 12, 10 and 7, so i think i could just about handle it and even possibly fit the pub in too

One lady I remember particularly. I think her youngest was 7 ...
On a Thursday morning she would come and find us after our first lecture where we were desperately drinking coffee to rid ourselves our hangovers ... she would demand minute details of our debauched night the night before (Wednesday night was diamond white for a pound at the union bar - ) ...
She was brilliant, a good laugh, loved her kids, loved uni and ended up with a 2:1 ... with fab job ... at the end of it

NM - there were definitely longer holidays than the school ones but I don't think they completely coincided - I think we missed some of the half-termly ones but did well at Easter, Christmas and the summer.

It doesn't sound as if you have to specialise on your course - looks like a really good one. I know that some fellow students were frustrated at having to study Shakespeare etc when they wouldn't be teaching it (though I enjoyed that almost as much as the classroom application bits)so it seems reasonable that some degrees wouldn't include that. I think that we were expected to eventually become curriculum leaders in our chosen areas once we started teaching - though that didn't necessarily follow for everyone. I'd go for it - it looks great with lots of classroom based stuff.

Thanks, as long as i got the longer hols like xmas, summer hols etc then i'd be fine. My mum can cover any shorter ones.

Hi i'm currently doing a BA in Education which is three years followed by a forth year of Primary PGCE. My son was nine months when I started and is now 18 months. I've just finished my first year and am on course for a 2:1. I had lectures 9am-12pm monday and tuesday and 2pm-5pm tuesdays in the first semester and 9am-12pm monday 2pm-5pm monday and 12pm-3pm on tuesdays the second semester. Have been warned though that this coming year (sept 07) lectures will be almost every day. Hope this helps. It is hard work but worth it, i've got so much out of studying.