What do PGCE graduates do?

• Overview
• Survey response
• Types of work
• Further information
• Source of data

Overview

The Postgraduate Certificate for Education (PGCE) is a special form of postgraduate degree that essentially operates as a conversion course, conferring students the same professional status as the undergraduate Bachelor of Education. It lasts one year, and is almost always studied full time.

2003 saw nearly 23,000 (22,820) graduates from PGCE courses, with 79.4% (18120) replying to the survey. Women dominate study in this subject, with over 70% (70.2%) of respondents (See Table One)

Table One: UK-domiciled PGCE graduates from 2003.

Survey response

With an employment rate of 89.4% for those simply working, and another 4.8% working and studying, it is clear that PGCE graduates enjoy extremely high employability, with only 1.7% out of work at the time of the survey (See Figure One)

Figure One: Survey response of UK-domiciled PGCE graduates from 2003

Types of work

Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of respondents went into education, with 94.4% of employed PGCE graduates teaching within 6 months of graduation. Overall, this means that 88.8% of all respondents completing a PGCE in 2003 were teaching at the start of 2004, 6 months after gaining their qualification.

Overall, more than half of all working PGCE graduates were in secondary education (52.5%). (See Figure Two) Of these, two thirds (65.7%) were women.

A further one in three entered primary education (29.3%), with women making up 86.4% of new primary school teachers. Further education teaching professionals account for 7.8%. The only significant destination for PGCE graduates outside education are the 1.9% who go into professional occupations, and the 1.0% who go to take up management positions.

Figure Two: Types of work of UK-domiciled PGCE graduates from 2003

Further information

• What do Masters graduates do? - for information about masters degrees
• What do graduates do? - for information about undergraduate destinations six months after graduating

Source of Data

All raw data is taken from the Destinations of Leavers of Higher Education (DLHE) 2002/3 survey from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, HESA.

HESA cannot accept responsibility for any conclusions or inferences derived from the data by third parties.

For futher information on the data, please visit Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)

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