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Cornwall SCITT programme

Cornwall School Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) has been awarded "Outstanding" status by Ofsted, recognising the highest quality of teaching training provision.

The success of Cornwall SCITT rests with the input and collaboration of local Cornish secondary schools and Truro College who are integral partners in training the student teachers. Ofsted commented in their 2008 report that the quality of the management and  training is outstanding, that schools are highly committed to the SCITT and provide very good training venues which help to ensure the strong coherence of the training programme.

Further comments included:
"The real strength of the provision is the extent to which training takes account of individual needs. Trainees come from a variety of backgrounds and all trainers get to know them very well at an early stage. High employment rates within the county and the high level of satisfaction with SCITT trained teachers as reported by head teachers and the local authority indicate the effectiveness of both recruitment and training."

Over the past 9 years, 380 teachers have trained through this scheme, many of whom are now teaching locally in Cornwall. The popularity of this course has grown so rapidly over the past few years that demand for places exceeds availability.

Alison Smith, Programme Manager:

Cornwall School Centred Initial Teacher Training is a consortium of 16 local secondary schools, one special school, and one tertiary college offering training for the 11-16 age range with post 16 enhancements and training for the Diploma for the 14-19 age range with additional Key Stage 3 experience. A distinctive feature of this training, is that the course is focused on carefully staged and appropriately supervised practical classroom experience within at least two secondary schools, which is further supported by academic study via central training.

This course is full time for one academic year (September to July) and on successful completion, you are awarded Qualified Teacher Status together with a PGCE validated by the Open University.

This teacher training programme has been validated through a process of external peer review by Open University as being of an appropriate standard and quality to lead to the Open University validated award of PGCE (OUVA).

To reflect national changes to academic qualifications across all universities in the UK, the PGCE qualification formerly called the Postgraduate Certificate in Education, changed in September 2007 to the Professional Graduate Certificate in Education - or PGCE!

Cornwall SCITT is offering the POST GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN EDUCATION with 60 Masters credits as well as the PROFESSIONAL GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN EDUCATION at H level.

Successful trainees will receive their PGCE from the Open University, alongside Qualified Teacher Status by the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE).