Secondary Teaching leading to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) PGCE: What makes a good teacher

To be a good teacher is to be reflective, critical of your own work, innovative and, above all, responsive to the needs of the children in your care. All of this makes a PGCE a demanding but immensely rewarding course.

Many students embarking on a PGCE course think that they will be taught the way to teach. But teaching is such a personal activity that this is impossible.

Instead the teaching philosophies and strategies that each of you develops will be separate and personal. They will depend on many things, including:

• the nature and personality of the pupils you encounter;
• the 'style' of the school in which you teach;
• the resources available; and
• the way in which the school organises teaching.

More than anything else, your own strengths and weaknesses, and interests and interactions with pupils, teachers and fellow students, will condition that development.