We offer two School Direct routes into teaching, with the University of Exeter accrediting our trainees, Primary PGCE and Primary with SEND PGCE.

The school direct route means our trainees are in school from the start of September in the year in which they begin their training.  They are placed with an experienced teacher in their 1st mainstream placement, gradually building up their expertise until they are doing whole class teaching for most of the time.

In addition, the trainees complete distance learning modules set by the University of Exeter and attend around 15 days face to face training with us with sessions covering literacy, maths, special needs and short sessions on all areas of the curriculum. We do switch to using Zoom for these training sessions, if the guidance requires us to stop face to face training and we have not yet missed a session!   They are led by expert professionals and outstanding teachers.  We particularly focus on the core subjects and on SEND as we want to make sure that our trainees are skilled in supporting pupils with additional needs.

You can apply for either programme, or both.  If you are offered a place, you will complete two contrasting placements, gaining experience in both Key Stages 1 & 2.  The differences between the Primary and Primary with SEND routes are:

• For SEND trainees, the second placement is in one of the special schools or specialist SEND provision in Dorset
• Trainees attend additional SEND modules, although all trainees may attend these sessions, they are only mandatory for the SEND specialism
• The university assignments have a focus on SEND.

We try to keep the trainees within a 30 minute drive of their home or children’s school as many of our trainees are balancing family life with their teacher training year.

At the end of the programme, should you meet the Teacher Standards, you will be awarded Qualified Teacher Status which will enable you to apply for teaching posts.  In addition, should you reach the required level, you will be awarded a Post Graduate Certification of Education (PGCE) or Post Graduate Certification of Education with Special Educational Needs / Disabilities (PGCE SEND).

In order to apply, you should have:

• A degree, preferably a 2:1 although 2:2 is considered
• GCSEs at Grade C or above in maths, English language and science

How to apply:

• You can look at the training providers using the DfE FIND tool. Full details of our programmes are on this. If you search by provider and type in TADSS, then choose Primary, you can see all our options.
• You can start your application from within FIND, by scrolling to the end of a set of course information and clicking on Apply for this course This will lead you to creating an account with the DfE, which you can do from today.
• Once you have created your account, you can select the courses you wish to apply for within FIND or APPLY. You can search for us by provider name (TADSS) or location.  You can apply to up to 3 providers in the first
• We will see the applications and will be inviting people to assessment days as quickly as possible.

If you have any questions or would like further information please call Nichola or Laura on 01305 833518 or email tadssitt@westfield.dorset.sch.uk