Finding your own placement school for undergraduate teacher training

Meet Chris: Expert Advice on Sourcing Your Own Teaching Placement

Chris has worked for NITE since 2024, having previously worked as Deputy Head of Primary Education with another ITT provider for a number of years. Prior to this, he worked as a primary school teacher. He has supported hundreds of undergraduate students with teaching, marking and placements. Here, he shares some tips for students looking to source their own placement.

Before you start

Before you even start to look for a placement school as an undergraduate trainee, get some school experience. This will help you confirm that you do want a career in teaching but also demonstrate to potential placement schools that you have some classroom experience on your CV. If you are in England, the DfE offers a service that puts those looking for school experience in touch with schools happy to offer it. You can sign up for this service on the GOV.UK website.

You might also consider applying for a support role, such as a Teaching Assistant. This can be excellent preparation for initial teacher training, and you may even find your school is willing to support you while you qualify at a later date.

Why do I find my own placement?

At NITE, we like to be different. We allow our students the opportunity to choose the schools they train in. This means you have greater control over the school you want to be in, you know the kind of school you are looking for and you know what it’s like to travel in your local area far better than we do!

You don’t have to wait until you are offered a place on our PGCE to start looking. Schools are generally supportive of those wanting to train to teach and even if they are not able to offer you a placement at that time, they may be able to support you in finding another local school through their connections. School leaders talk!

Where do I start?

Listen, we know it sounds a scary and daunting task to try and phone or visit schools to chat to them about a placement. Often, students start with links they may currently have. You will have a real advantage if you have worked in support roles in school or have volunteered and so are known. This is why we strongly recommend getting some experience volunteering in a school as a first step. This will help you get to know the school and they will begin to recognise your strengths. This can make opening the conversation a little easier.

Students who are parents often begin with their children’s school. Of course, if you are not a parent, a different option would be to think about family members. Do you have family members who work or attend a school? You could even think about your old school! Think about your friends, could any of them have useful contacts or connections that might help you?

Don’t give up! Schools are incredibly busy places. You might get knocked down a few times before you find a school that is willing to support you. It’s worth using the Department for Education’s Get Information About Schools search tools. You can use filters to focus on your postcode and set a distance to generate a list of all the schools in your area. If you want to, you can download this and it will give you the headteacher’s name, the web address and contact telephone number.

Another good tip is signing up to Google job alerts. You can specify the keywords such as ‘school placement’ or ‘ITT placement school’ and you can set a filter to base it on your location. Some schools market themselves through advertising agencies to support placements and some local authorities promote opportunities on their websites.

When should I start finding a school?

Now! You don’t have to wait until you are offered a place before you start looking. Obviously, let the school know you are planning to apply to NITE and when you are hoping to start the course. Don’t worry if you haven’t heard back from the school after phoning and leaving a message. If you haven’t heard anything after about 10 days, then it’s okay to follow that up. Schools are incredibly busy places, so you might not get an immediate response. Also, think carefully about when you are reaching out to a school. If it’s during the school holidays, then it would be unlikely that you’d get a reply! You can find term dates on the school website.

What does the school need to know?

Ultimately, the school will need to be willing to provide you with a suitably qualified teacher to act as your in-school mentor and provide you with time over the course to increase your teaching. Part of the mentoring is a regular meeting, usually once per fortnight, as well as observations, but we’ll be able to talk to you and the mentor about those when you start.

Once you’ve been offered a place, we will contact the school to provide further information to your school to help them understand what will be required of them. We offer a range of training for schools and mentors over the year, and they will be very well supported by our University Lead Mentors. We are always happy to speak to, or meet with, schools considering hosting one of our students, so do ask them to contact us at nite.partnerships@coventry.ac.uk if they have questions.

What happens if I can’t find a placement?

If you are unable to find a placement school in time, you can defer to start with the next cohort, and with NITE that is just one more term. So, if you’re trying to start in September but can’t, it means you’re able to start in January! If you wanted to start in January but can’t, you could start in April. We’re unique in that way.