WEST LONDON TEACHING SCHOOL ALLIANCE SCHOOL DIRECT TEACHER TRAINING 2018-19 in partnership with UCAS COURSE CODE VACANCIES: 9 UCAS Provider 2BV: West London Teaching School Alliance (Secondary) This programme is available at Chelsea Academy, SW10 Drayton Manor High School, W7 Fulham Boys’ School, W14 Fulham College Boys’ School, SW6 Fulham Cross Girls’ School, SW6 Hammersmith Academy, W12 Sacred Heart High School, W6 St Benedict’s School, W5 2ES St Mark’s Catholic School, TW3 APPLY ONLINE THROUGH www.ucas.com School Direct Training Programme - Unsalaried Contents Page 1 Why Train with Us? 2 1.1 Introduction 2 1.2 The West London Teaching School Alliance (WLTSA) 2 1.3 The WLTSA School Direct Recruitment System 3 1.4 Your Host School 4 1.5 Our University Partner – St Mary’s University, Twickenham 11 2 About this training programme 11 2.1 Introduction 11 2.2 Number of Places Available on 2XW2 11 2.3 Qualification Outcome – PGCE (M) with QTS Explained 12 2.4 Training 12 2.5 Costs and Finances 13 3 Entry Requirements 13 3.1 Academic Requirements 13 3.2 Awareness of the Profession 14 3.3 Professional Skills Tests 14 3.4 Medical Fitness 15 3.5 DBS/Prohibition Checks 15 4 What we are looking for 15 4.1 Enthusiasm, Willingness to Collaborate and a Practical Approach 15 4.2 Personal Requirements 15 5 How to Apply 16 5.1 The UCAS Process- ‘Apply 1’ 16 5.2 ‘Apply 2’ 18 6 How we select our trainees 18 6.1 Selection 18 6.2 Interviews 18 6.3 Rejections following interview 18 6.4 Offers 19 APPENDIX 1: ABOUT THE WLTSA This includes general information including our UCAS provider codes; information about our partner universities and partner schools; childcare facilities; accommodation, disability access and where to find us. West London Teaching School Alliance September 2017 School Direct Training Programme - Salaried 1 Why Train with Us? 1.1 Introduction In considering why to train with us, it is important to understand the strengths of: 1. The West London Teaching School Alliance and our collaborative approach to recruitment (section 1.2 - 1.3); 2. The host school where you would be located for the majority of your training (section 1.4); and 3. Our university partner for this programme (section 1.5). 1.2 The West London Teaching School Alliance (WLTSA) The West London Teaching School Alliance (WLTSA) is coordinated through Sacred Heart High School in Hammersmith, which is a National Teaching School designated by the National College for Teaching and Leadership. The WLTSA is a large alliance of over 50 partner schools including nursery schools, primary schools, special schools, secondary schools and specialist sixth forms. Our schools include both faith and non-faith schools, maintained schools and free schools. We are an innovative and growing partnership, which has expanded beyond its original focussed area of central West London, with partner schools in the London Boroughs of Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, Westminster; Richmond; Ealing, Hounslow, Hillingdon, Southwark and Merton. For 2018-19, we are seeking to fill over 150 School Direct vacancies in our partner schools. All of our programmes are partnered with one of three universities - St Mary’s University, Twickenham; University of Roehampton; and UCL (Institute of Education). Training with WLTSA schools gives you the unique opportunity to experience a broad range of teaching environments, with all our schools aiming to provide the highest quality teaching and learning for their pupils and the trainees they are developing. Our partner schools all offer you the opportunity to train to teach with excellent, experienced teachers in dynamic learning environments that foster talent. Within WLTSA, there are extensive opportunities for future professional leadership development including an excellent Masters Programme with St Mary’s. WLTSA VISION WLTSA has a commitment to achieving excellence in learning, teaching and school leadership. We aim to appoint the highest calibre of teachers in our schools: who are innovative in the teaching practices they adopt; seek to collaborate and support each other through strong partnerships; and engage in the intelligent use of research and development of pedagogy. We continue to stay abreast of national and international educational research to inform our approach. We aim to inspire our teachers to be advocates of life- long learning who become outstanding practitioners, colleagues, managers and leaders in our schools, equipped to adapt to the needs of learners and schools of the future. Page 2 West London Teaching School Alliance September 2017 School Direct Training Programme - Salaried We aim to provide a clear framework for career development to ensure high quality, relevant training to meet the needs of teaching staff at different stages of their careers, from career entry to headship in its increasingly various forms A bright future for all learners through innovation, collaboration, engagement and success. 1.3 The WLTSA School Direct Recruitment System A full list of all our 56 School Direct partner schools (with web-links and postcodes) is set out in Appendix 1. All of these schools are working with us to fill School Direct vacancies but not all of them have vacancies on this particular programme. Each of our partner schools has requested to run a specific programme (or programmes) for 2018-19 and you can see a full list of our programmes and which schools have vacancies for them, on our website: www.wltsa.org.uk (Initial Teacher Training tab/vacancies tabs). Our website is much easier to use than UCAS for finding details about programmes. By clicking the green buttons on our website next to each vacancy, you will be able to see other documents like this one, for programmes hosted at other schools. The structure of all our programme documents is identical, e.g. entry requirements are always in section 3. PROVIDER CODES We have so many partner schools that the UCAS system cannot cope with the size of our alliance. We therefore have to divide artificially on UCAS into three ‘provider’ names to divide up our programmes: Provider 1EL: West London Teaching School Alliance (Primary Roehampton) All our salaried and unsalaried primary programmes partnered with Roehampton University. The unsalaried programmes include some with additional bursaries from our schools and you can identify these easily on our website; Provider 2H3: West London Teaching School Alliance (Primary St Mary’s) All our salaried and unsalaried primary programmes partnered with St Mary’s University, Twickenham. The unsalaried programmes include some with additional bursaries from our schools and you can identify these easily on our website; Provider 2BV: West London Teaching School Alliance (Secondary) This includes all our salaried and unsalaried secondary programmes partnered with St Mary’s University, Roehampton University and UCL (IOE) Rest assured that we operate as one single organisation –the West London Teaching School Alliance. The vacancy lists on our website are regularly updated to show recruitment progress e.g., which schools are already shortlisting; who is interviewing, who’s already offered. This is more information than you can see on UCAS, which simply lists programmes as open or closed (filled) and is helpful to see the detail when applying. If you accidentally apply for one of our programmes that is further down the process than you thought, just call us and Page 3 West London Teaching School Alliance September 2017 School Direct Training Programme - Salaried we can transfer your application to another WLTSA school of your choosing, without the need for you to make any further UCAS application. We have set UCAS up so that after choosing the programmes you want to apply to, you can then also select the specific school/s that you want as your host school. Further information about this included in How to Apply, Section 5. We divide all our places up to the specific schools who requested them so that you can effectively choose the school and upon interview, the school can choose you. This leads to a better fit between trainee and school, which is important in terms of later potential employment but it also means that commonly there are only 1 or 2 vacancies for a particular programme at each school. Please be reassured that this system also heavily divides applications. Sometimes excellent schools both (primary and secondary) receive hardly any applications all year, simply because there are so many to choose from (particularly for unsalaried primary) and perhaps the applicants for ‘that subject that year’, did not live close to that school. You can always email or phone us for strategic advice on this when you are about to apply. We will be happy to tell you, which schools have no applicants and which have many but it is important that you also consider the description and location of each school to ensure that it is right for you. Although we have specific vacancies at each of our schools, all our schools work collaboratively together to find places for all worthy candidates. They all report back centrally if they have interviewed a worthy candidate that they do not have space for and with the applicant’s consent, we can transfer their application internally on UCAS to another WLTSA school. Overall, we have 100 vacancies for primary and 67 vacancies for secondary. Despite the possibility for internal transfer referred to above, it remains advantageous to apply to more than one WLTSA programme or school at the same time to ensure that your separate applications are considered in parallel. There is a UCAS time limit (approx. 40 days) for providers to consider your application before UCAS automatically rejects you. If you have queries, please email us centrally at [email protected] rather than contacting our partner schools.