Course aims

The secondary initial teacher education programme at The OAKS has been designed to be both academic and vocational. Our programme will provide challenges to you as a trainee teacher, in a teaching and learning environment which will enable you to engage, motivate and hopefully inspire all pupils.

The broad aims of the main curriculum component of the programme are to:

• enable you to become a highly-motivated, outstanding, effective, creative and reflective practitioner
• develop your subject knowledge and teach you how to put that knowledge into practice (pedagogy) in order to thrive in the culture of our schools
• promote the importance of managing workload and personal wellbeing and to prepare you for a career in teaching that will prove to be successful and rewarding
• develop in you a commitment to and enthusiasm for continuing professional and personal development

Attention is given to developing appropriate philosophies about your work as teachers, to planning, assessing and teaching within the overall scheme of the national curriculum, Key Stage 4 and post-16 courses in your particular schools, and to assisting you in learning the necessary skills to implement these plans. All of this is undertaken to enable you to meet the Teachers’ Standards (revised 2013) which will allow you to take up your first teaching appointment with confidence and high levels of competence. The OAKS staff have a wealth of experience in supporting our trainee teachers to successfully graduate and start their new teaching careers confidently.

ITT core content framework (2020)

The OAKS curriculum is underpinned by this key framework and is a great place to start to be able to grasp the scope of your training year and beyond. The ITT core content framework (2020) sets out two types of content, mirroring the early career framework (2021).

Within each area key evidence statements (‘Learn that…’) have been drawn from current high-quality evidence from the UK and overseas. Within both frameworks a full bibliography is provided with suggested reading, which will be shared with trainee teachers to support their critical engagement with research. These will be referenced within The OAKS sessions and signposted as either pre-session or further reading depending on the subject matter. This bibliography includes high-quality reviews and syntheses, including meta-analyses and rigorous individual studies.