From Classroom to Career: Unveiling Trainee Teachers' Insights on Preparedness for School Employment

The Department for Education (DfE, 2023) currently reports a continuing downward trend when it comes to employment rates for PGCE students working in state school. In this climate, seems pertinent to understand what could be impacting student employability, how to improve it, and barriers that might be in place. However, UK-based research which explores employability factors seems somewhat limited to the views of employers or HE providers; the students’ voices are notably absent and so are their experiences of their programme’s provision, meaning a piece is missing when it comes to ascertaining HE providers could work to improve their students’ employability. It seems that an understanding of PGCE students’ employability needs and perspectives on how to develop in this area are largely unknown. This paper aims to address this gap and provide empirical evidence from secondary post-graduate certificate of education (PGCE) students from one university in London. The aim of our paper is to explore their views about support and opportunities they have regarding employability during their course. Our sample consists of PGCE Secondary Education students, studying different disciplines e.g. Geography, RE, Science. Data was collected through individual semi-structured interviews via TEAMs and conducted via different researchers. Each student participated in a 30–40-minute semi-structured interview. Preliminary findings showed valuable information about the support they received during their studies and ideas for further support during their studies. Implications for practice could include how HE Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme could be developed to increase student employment prospects in within the UK’s ever-changing and often challenging context.