Career Opportunities with a Teacher Training Degree

For the majority of undergraduates who take a Teacher Training degree their ultimate career goal is to become a teacher. However, this isn’t the only thing you can do with a Teacher Training degree and even if you do go into teaching, you might want a change later down the line.

The skills you’ll gain during your degree will prepare you for any number of roles that involve working with children or young people. You’ll also develop many transferrable skills that employers from all industries will be looking for.

Whether you want to go into teaching, or you’re using your Teacher Training degree as a route to another career option, it’s important to gain as much relevant work experience as you can to show potential employers you have what it takes to be successful.

Here’s more about the career opportunities with a Teacher Training degree:

What educational skills will I learn?

Obviously the point of an education related degree is to learn skills linked to education and teaching. These skills include:

• Skills surrounding educational issues
• Theories of learning
• Equality and diversity
• Education policy and practice
• Creativity and education
• A general understanding of education in social, political and economic contexts

What non-educational skills will I learn?

Throughout your course you’ll also learn a variety of non-educational, and highly transferrable, skills including:

• Communication skills (oral and written)
• ICT skills
• Research and analytical skills
• Interpersonal skills (including strong teamwork skills)
• Problem-solving skills
• Organisation and time management skills – to combine to your work in and outside of the classroom
• Self-management - planning your own workload and reflecting on and improving personal practice

Jobs directly related to your Teacher Training degree

Teaching

This could be early years, primary, secondary, or special educational needs. You could also take postgraduate qualifications if you wanted to teach at college or university level.

There are many benefits to becoming a teacher including job security, an enviable pension, and of course the long summer holidays!

Of course, you’ll also be making a real difference to the lives of the young people you teach by inspiring them to become lifelong learners. By giving all students access to high quality education you’re enabling them to fulfil their potential in life.

As a teacher you’ll need to have a broad range of qualities and abilities, including:

• The ability to relate to pupils and their parents/guardians
• Enthusiasm teaching and the for the subjects you teach
• A depth of knowledge in the subject/age range and relevant curriculum
• Dedication and commitment
• Resilience
• The ability to convey your knowledge to the students in an engaging and understandable way
• Patience
• Integrity
• A good sense of humour

Other jobs directly related to your degree, but not teaching, include:

• Community education officer
• Education administrator
• Community based learning
• Youth worker

Jobs not directly related to your Teacher Training degree

There are also many jobs where your Teacher Training degree would be incredibly useful, even if it isn’t obviously related to the educational skills you’ll have learnt.

Remember, the list below isn’t exhaustive. There are many career options and most employers will accept graduates with any degree subject, so don’t limit yourself to just considering the jobs we’ve listed.

Typical employers of education graduates are local government education authorities as they have the responsibility for schools. Some education graduates may go on to work in colleges or for private schools where you will be employed directly by the institution.

Central government departments and universities also employ education graduates to work in policy or research roles. Other employers include community and voluntary organisations, museums and the police and probation services.

The jobs not directly related to your Teacher Training degree, but still involving working with children or young people, include:

• Careers adviser
• Alternative education roles
• Community development worker
• Teaching ill children
• Learning mentor
• Teaching children from the travelling community
• Counselling and student welfare
• Working with offenders
• Health education roles
• Parent education (for example Sure Start courses)
• Museum education officer
• Speech and language therapist
• Schools liaison
• School support and assessment

Even less common career paths for Teacher Training graduates include working for both public and private sector employers in a wide range of careers such as human resource management, speech therapy, market and policy research, retail management, education psychology and careers guidance.