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Teacher Training Personal Statement Examples
What is a teacher training personal statement?
The teacher training personal statement is your opportunity to let training providers know about your qualities, skills and expertise, and why you want to teach.
While your application form briefly outlines your qualifications, skills and work experience, your teaching personal statement is where your personality shines through.
Take your time with it, be prepared to receive constructive feedback and write a few drafts before you send it off.
How do I write a good teacher training personal statement?
To help you write a successful teacher training personal statement, we recommend you include:
- use examples to back everything up, based on your teaching experience so far
- tailor your personal statement according to the age group you wish to teach
- write using concise English, using first person terms such as 'my' and 'I'
- be original and honest - don't embellish the truth or lie outright
- avoid clichés and general statements, such as 'since a young age' or 'I've always wanted to be a teacher'
- demonstrate your passion and enthusiasm for teaching.
You have up to 4,000 characters to write a memorable opening, middle and conclusion.
Don't waste your valuable space on writing about things that are already on your UCAS form elsewhere, such as your qualifications.
What should I include in my teacher training personal statement?
When planning out your personal statement, ask yourself what it is your training providers are looking for. Make sure your statement answers the following questions:
- Why do I want to teach? - show that you know about the challenges and rewards of teaching, and remember that everything has its ups and downs. Maybe talk about any lessons you have observed/taught, what went well and how you would have improved on them. Discuss teaching styles used and the use of technology in the classroom.
- Why do I want to teach this age group/at this level? - what appeals to you, and what experience do you have teaching these students/children?
- What are my strengths? - include the relevance of your degree and subject knowledge.
- What experience do I have? - include any experience you have of volunteering with children, such as teaching a sports team, youth work or working at a summer camp? Give examples of how this helpd develop your teaching skills.
- What personal skills/abilities do I have? - these might include research, creativity, time management, IT skills, problem solving, managing people, organisational skills, listening skills, leading or working in a team. To strengthen your application, make sure you back everything up with examples.
- Are there are any location restrictions? - if you don't currently live in the UK, why do you want to study here? Are you willing to move away from your current home town/city for your degree?
You only have up to 47 lines (4,000 characters including spaces) in which to persuade your chosen initial teacher training (ITT) providers to offer you an interview. The statement must be concise, enthusiastic and sell your potential to be a successful teacher.
For more help and advice on what to write in your teacher training personal statement, please see:
- Personal Statement Editing Services
- Personal Statement Tips From A Teacher
- Analysis Of A Personal Statement
- The 15th January UCAS Deadline: 4 Ways To Avoid Missing It
- Personal Statement FAQs
- Personal Statement Timeline
- 10 Top Personal Statement Writing Tips
- What To Do If You Miss The 15th January UCAS Deadline.
What is a teacher training degree?
Teacher training degrees combine the study of curriculum subjects with learning teaching techniques and putting these into practice during hands-on school placements. The course leads to QTS (qualified teacher status) to enable you to teach in a school or college.
How long is a teacher training course?
To teach in England and Wales you need to gain QTS. You will obtain this on an ITT programme, which could be school or university-based and takes approximately one year to complete.
How do I become a teacher with a degree?
To teach as a qualified teacher in England, you'll need qualified teacher status (QTS). If you already have a degree, you can complete a postgraduate teacher training course to achieve this. Additionally, you'll need to have a GCSE at grade C/4 in maths and English, as well as science if you want to teach primary.
Can I train to be a teacher without a degree?
Unfortunately no - you cannot become a teacher without a degree.
But if you are an undergraduate or have a degree in a different subject than what you want to teach, there are options to help you get into a teaching career.
Will I get paid for teacher training?
There are three types of funding available for teacher training - depending on your circumstances, you could receive all three:
- Tax-free bursary or scholarship.
- Tuition Fee Loan and Maintenance Loan.
- Extra financial support if you're a parent, have an adult dependant or a disability.
Further information
For more tips and advice on teacher training personal statements, please see:
- GetIntoTeaching
- The Complete University Guide
Related resources
Teacher training interview questions.
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Applying For Teacher Training Courses
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How to write your teacher training personal statement
Your teacher training personal statement should express why you'd make a great teacher and spell out your experiences, qualities and skills. We've got the inside track from Admissions Tutors on how to go about writing a good teacher training personal statement, what to do and what not to overlook...
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Let's start with a look at when to apply for teacher training. Places on teacher training courses are filled on a first come first serve basis. This is due to two factors. Firstly, the Department for Education set the maximum number of trainees on some courses. But the thing that really limits the number of places available is ensuring that there are enough school placements for all trainees. Training providers can only recruit up to a number that is manageable in terms of providing the trainees with the placement experiences they need.
Places for the most popular subjects tend to go early, for example, Physical Education (PE), Primary and Psychology. Shortage subjects such as Chemistry, Computing, Maths and Physics don’t fill up so fast.
The route you are taking into teaching may also influence when you apply. School Direct is run by the schools themselves and they can only take as many trainees as they can train within their schools. They may only have the one place available for your chosen subject and once those placements are gone, they’re gone. Universities tend to have larger and wider networks of partner schools which provide school placements. This gives them more options for finding school placements so they may have places available for longer. Unlike School Direct you don’t get to choose exactly which school you go to, though they’ll try to match your school placements to your preferences as much as possible. If you apply late you run the risk that all the placements are gone.
So, you want to apply as soon as you can, with a brilliant personal statement that reflects who you are and why you want to become a teacher. So, what does that look like?
Your teacher training personal statement broadly needs to convey four things:
- Your passion for wanting to become a teacher and commitment to the profession.
- Your reasons for wanting to teach your chosen subject.
- The skills and experience that you’ll bring to the role of teacher.
- Your awareness of the realities of what lies ahead - it’s a challenging but rewarding role so you need to be realistic about this and be aware of some of the hot topics facing the sector.
Kate Brimacombe, Associate Professor of Education and Associate Director of the Teacher Education Partnership at Plymouth Marjon University, explains what she is looking for in a teacher training personal statement:
“It's really lovely to get something that's individual and firstly I want to see that passion for wanting to work with children. You absolutely can get that across - it comes off the page.
“It can’t feel half-hearted, it needs to feel committed. If independence, motivation, and self-reliance don’t sing off the page, then that's an error in a sense. You need to get your personality into the written word, I’m looking for that fire that says ‘this is absolutely what I want to do’. One common mistake is being too short so that it doesn’t get that passion across. The lack of content and desire are the main reasons I don't shortlist candidates.”
You must convey why you want to teach your subject. What is your expertise? Why do you love it? What are the challenges facing teachers of your subject? Why do you want to teach this? Think about the age group you’ll be teaching and discuss why you want to teach them. What relevant experience do you have? How does your experience to date influence your thinking?
Ultimately, you’ve got to inspire others to love your subject, so be clear about how your own relationship to it is going to enable this.
The ingredients of a convincing teacher training personal statement are:
- Passion for teaching. Express your drive and fire on the page.
- Be individual. Stand out in a positive light; one tip here is not to waste characters on quotes, they don’t say anything about you.
- Convey your desire to work with children. Explain where this comes from.
- Prove it. Include the things you have actively done, what you’ve learnt from real life experiences in schools and/or working with children, and what you got out of it.
- Demonstrate the qualities of a teacher. Point out your commitment, empathy, independence, innovation, motivation, patience, self-reliance, and tip-top organisation skills.
- Depth. Don’t cut it too short, you’re allowed up to 4000 characters which is around 600-700 words, so write until you’re thereabouts, and then edit it so that it reads even better.
In addition, for a strong personal statement you’ll want to demonstrate some awareness of the national curriculum for your subject and then highlight how your subject knowledge maps to it.
Back to Kate for another crucial tip: “The other big thing is that we’re checking the accuracy of your spelling and grammar, it must be correct if you’re going to be a teacher. To be fair, we don't get a lot of mistakes because I think people understand that expectations around written and verbal communication are high in teaching.”
Some aspiring teachers know they want to teach but are uncertain on the age group or subject. For example, maybe you love sport and are keen to be a secondary PE teacher, but you also enjoy working with younger children at sports clubs so you’re feeling split. In this scenario, try to settle this before you apply but if you can’t then write honestly about the situation and take extra care to ensure that neither option comes across being the fallback one that you’re not really committed to.
The magic ingredient: Examples from your own experience
There's no one way to structure your teacher training personal statement but be sure to back up every point you make with evidence. A great way to do this is give real life examples of what you actually did, and what you learned from it. It’s not enough to just list your work experience, you need to explain what you learned and how this experience will help you as a teacher.
You don’t need school experience to apply for a teaching course, though it helps. But if you don’t have school experience then you at least need some transferable skills, so any other experience of working with children is valid here, things like helping with sports teams and youth clubs are valid too. Use your examples to demonstrate the skills you’d bring to the role of teacher.
You could also refer to a teacher who made a difference to you at school, or who influenced your love of working with children and helping them to learn.
By discussing examples, you can also demonstrate that you are realistic about the role, in that is challenging as well as rewarding. For example, you might discuss a session you observed or taught, reflecting on what went well, how you adapted to the situation and how you would improve on it.
This is how to make effective use of real life examples, according to Julie Stevens, course leader for PGCE Secondary Education at Plymouth Marjon University: “I want to read about how you’ve helped a pupil to make progress. What did you change? How did you recognise they weren’t learning? What did you adapt to help them understand? Maybe you modelled it or talked it through? How did the child respond? You might talk for example about why a child was messing around or why a seating chart was put together in a certain way. It’s really encouraging when a candidate offers insights into teaching and that sense of self-reflection”.
You can talk about that examples that demonstrate transferable skills. For example, maybe you had to be resilient to get your Duke of Edinburgh award, maybe you’re a leader on the sports field or maybe you’re a dedicated musician with the music exams to prove it?
In addition, the way you talk about children is really important, the training provider needs to know that you see them as individuals and that you want to help them become independent thinkers. Back to Julie again for more about this: “I want to see candidates who talk about children as individuals and how you can help them make the best progress they can. Helping young people to make decisions for themselves and become independent learners, so that they take responsibility for their own success is essential for adulthood.
"It’s great when someone can talk about innovative things, like how to use social media for good outcomes. Anything like that is powerful because it means they understand our role as educators – we aren’t just filling them with knowledge, we're trying to get children and young people to understand how to develop themselves.”
Get your referee geared up
References really do matter. Julie and Kate report that in practice most of barriers to shortlisting a candidate come not from the personal statement, but from references that are too short. They’ve seen references as short as three lines and that doesn’t tell them enough about you and your suitability for a career in teaching. You could be an impressive candidate, but you can’t be offered a place until your reference checks out.
If you’re applying for undergraduate teacher training through UCAS then one reference is required. If you’re applying for postgraduate teacher training then you’ll need two references. If you’re at university, or have been within the past five years, then one reference must be from someone at your university. The other reference can be from someone who knows you from work, and if you’re applying for School Direct then one of your references must come from your current employer.
A good reference says good things about you and backs up some of qualities and skills you’ve outlined in your personal statement. Your referee needs to talk about your character and why they think you could be a great teacher. The training provider is looking for insight; a different perspective on you, and hopefully one that that verifies the impressions they’re taking from your statement.
You can do a lot to make sure your reference is on point. First ask your referees if they are willing to be your referee and if they think you’ve got the potential to be a good teacher. Next you need to arm them with all the arguments as to why you’ll be a good teacher, they probably don’t know everything you do. Ideally they would read your personal statement so that they can write a reference that complements it.
If applicable, ask your referee to comment on your academic abilities, including your predicted grades. If possible, go through the reference with your referee as you might see something they’ve missed. If so, ask if they are willing to add it, it’s up to them but you can suggest things.
A good teacher training personal statement shows passion and love for teaching, as well as that you’ve done some research and that you’re dedicated to teaching career. Show your personality; show them the teacher you could be. @marjonuni
Back to Kate for closing advice: “Speak with honesty and speak from the heart. I’m looking for passion. I'm looking for somebody I think the has the potential. Then when you come to interview, I already know that you have that passion and so you just need to add the shine to that and tell us more about it in-person, one to one. In that way your teacher training personal statement is the stepping stone into the interview, if it does its job then we’ll be excited to find out more about you”.
You’ve got this. Follow the advice above and you’ll have a brilliant teacher training personal statement in the bag. The next step will be your teacher training interview, so why not check out our articles on how to ace your teacher training interview and teacher training interview questions .
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