Internships

Cambridgeshire Teacher Paid internships

A two year teacher internship programme - an alternative route to Qualified Teacher Status.

What our current interns think....

  • “I would recommend this approach to teacher training, especially for someone who is coming to teaching from another profession.”
  • “It is so reassuring to be based in a school that will support you.”
  • “My school is as invested in my training as I am.”
  • “It's paid! I simply could not have afforded to pay £9k for a PGCE and not be earning.”

Benefits for the intern

  • For those not yet sure they want to be a teacher, this is a chance to sample what it is like before committing yourself to a PGCE or School Direct ITT course.
  • You will be able to earn approximately £19000 over two years, with your training paid for. You will receive £3600 back from your school if you remain with them for three years after gaining Qualified Teacher Status.

Benefits for the school

  • The chance to ‘grow your own’ staff.
  • The chance to future-proof staffing issues, in a difficult recruitment climate which is predicted to become more challenging over the next two years,
  • CPD and mentoring opportunities for your existing staff, which could help retain them.

How it works

A school/trust/cluster commits to taking on a specific number of interns.
We advertise for interns and hold a ‘recruitment day’, which the Headteachers of participating schools will attend, so as to interview and assess candidates.

Year one

Interns start in September. Your school pays them £ £9,657.36* for the year (this is 29 hours per week, term time only, at the national living wage). The idea is that they will be supernumerary to your teaching assistant workforce, as they will be receiving training and will be moving around classes/groups so as to receive the complete experience. They will be expected to work as a TA to an extent in the first two terms however, with some team teaching/small group teaching in the third term.

Participating schools will be expected to provide training for all the interns on the Cambridgeshire programme, on a fortnightly rota basis. The training will revolve around the practicalities of working in a school as well as skills such as questioning, planning for differentiation etc. This training will normally take place on Thursday afternoons, unless all the participating schools agree to a different day.

Each intern will have a mentor within their own school, with whom they will meet on a regular basis.

The rota will be organised by the LA’s Senior Adviser: Curriculum, Teaching & Leadership (acting on behalf of Teach in Cambridgeshire) who will also be responsible for monitoring the interns and quality assuring the experience that they receive.

During year one, each intern will be expected to keep a portfolio which describes and evaluates the experiences they have had. Near the end of term three, the intern and their Head (with input from the intern’s in-school mentor) will decide whether the intern (a) wants (b) is suitable to continue to year two.

Once the decision has been made, the intern needs to apply to the Cambridge Partnership to follow their ‘self-funded’ route, and then take the professional skills tests. As long as they pass the tests and are accepted onto the Cambridge Partnership programme, they are ready to proceed to.....

Year Two

The participating school will give the intern a 75% timetable, which should not include Fridays (as that is when they will receive training from the Cambridge Partnership). They will pay them at the rate of an unqualified teacher at scale point one: £16,626; the intern will pay £6000 to the Cambridge Partnership to carry out the training. The Cambridge Partnership will invoice the school for the £6000 in the autumn term: you will probably want to deduct it monthly from the intern’s salary.

At the end of the year, presuming the intern has achieved QTS, they will then move on to a qualified teacher’s pay. As a ‘golden handcuffs’ offer, the intern will receive £100 per month (tax-free) as reimbursement of the money the school spent on their training. This continues for a maximum of 36 months. If the intern does not remain at your school, they will not receive any of the training money back.

Total costs involved:

Year one:  £9,657.36* salary for the intern (plus pension & NI costs)
£400 admin charge payable to the LA’s Curriculum, Teaching & Leadership Team.

Year two: £16,626 salary for the intern (plus pension & NI costs)
£150 admin charge payable to the LA’s Curriculum, Teaching & Leadership Team.

Plus - if the intern stays with you for three years - an extra £3600 over the three year period.
Note:
* If you already have an employee (eg a TA) who you would like to turn into an intern, they don’t necessarily have to take a pay cut – you could keep them on their original salary and pay for the training part of the internship separately.

For further information on Cambridgeshire paid internships please see https://www.teachincambs.org.uk/train-to-teach/cambridgeshire-paid-teacher-internships/.
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How the Cambridgeshire Teacher Internship Programme works.pdf
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Online Coordinator,
7 Feb 2018, 10:35
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