After seeing a rise in schools taking a more hands-on approach with Initial Teacher Training (ITT), a group of veteran educators formed Eureka Online College. Since the 2014/15 academic year, they have been working with lead schools and ITT providers across the country providing SKE courses for pre-ITT and training teachers. Often the trainees have been teaching assistants that have gone on to commence their School Direct teacher training programme, improving their school’s recruitment problems.
“Our team is made up of experienced teachers with a track record of outstanding teaching and leadership in schools,” said Nicola Harris, an assistant head and Science teacher. “We’re often frustrated by the shortage of Maths, Chemistry and Physics trainees available, so we wanted to do something about it by bringing together our knowledge and experience.”
Courses that were piloted in the 2014/15 academic year were found to be highly successful, and were attended mainly by TAs working within schools. Eureka Online College concentrate on flexibility, offering trainees the opportunity to continue in their present job while they completed their SKE course.
Eureka Online College’s courses are delivered online via a fully-interactive e-learning platform, making it fully flexible to any trainee’s life and commitments. All the course lessons, materials and tutorials are delivered online and can be studied part-time or full time. For those that want to study on their commute, trainees can access the course from any Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G device any time of day or night.
Recent student Chloe said: “I feel like I can achieve what I want to with the support from the tutors, who are always on hand for advice. The variety of video presentations, PowerPoints, online resources, reading materials and one-to-one live chats is fantastic, and keeps it refreshing.”
All Eureka Online College resources are transferrable as CPD for existing teachers. From March 2016, the team will be offering a reduced course of eight units covering the essentials for anyone currently teaching outside of their specialism and wanting to complete a 6 month CPD distant learning programme.
Visit www.eurekaonlinecollege.co.uk or contact [email protected] for more information.