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Secondary school teachers teach children from 11 to 16, or up to 19 in schools with sixth forms.
You could work: evenings; attending events or appointments
There will be
3.5% more Secondary school teacher jobs in 2029.
In your local area
As a secondary school teacher, you could:
You could work at a school, in a sixth form college, at a pupil referral unit or at a special needs school.
Your working environment may be physically and emotionally demanding.
You can get into this job through:
Undergraduate degree
You can do an undergraduate degree that leads to qualified teacher status (QTS), for example:
Postgraduate certificate
If you already have a bachelor's degree without qualified teacher status, you can complete a postgraduate qualification like a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) to get QTS. This can be done at university or through a training programme based in a school.
You need QTS to teach in most primary and secondary schools in England but you do not need a PGCE to teach.
Find out more about QTS from Get Into Teaching.
You do not always need to have a degree in the subject you'd like to teach. Your teacher training organisation will decide whether you have the required skills and knowledge to teach the subject.
If your training organisation thinks you need to improve your subject knowledge, they will ask you to do a subject knowledge enhancement course.
Change careers to teaching
Find out about the support available if you want to change to a career in teaching.
You'll usually need:
You may be able to apply to do an Undergraduate or Postgraduate Teacher Level 6 Apprenticeship.
The undergraduate option takes up to 4 years to complete. The postgraduate route takes around 1 year, with both leading to qualified teacher status (QTS).
You'll usually need:
You could start as a teaching assistant or learning mentor and do a part-time degree or an undergraduate teaching apprenticeship to gain qualified teacher status (QTS).
You might find it helpful to get some experience of working with young people.
You could volunteer at a school, do youth work or work on a holiday scheme.
You'll need to:
You can attend a Get Into Teaching event before you apply to get advice about teaching, funding and the different training routes available. You can attend events in person and online.
You can discover more about how to become a secondary school teacher from Get Into Teaching.
You can also search for jobs through the Teaching Vacancies service.
With experience you could:become a special educational needs teacher, further education teacher or move into pastoral care; become a specialist leader of education and support teachers in other schools; be a curriculum leader, head of year, deputy head or headteacher; work for an exam board, a local education authority, or in a gallery or museum as an education officer; work freelance as a private tutor
The Get Into Teaching website has more information on how to develop your career.