Secondary school teaching- prerequisites.

[hannahroseillia]

Hello everyone,
I am a year 11 student studying to become a secondary school teacher majoring in English. I have been told that I only need units 1/2 of General Mathematics to be able to become a teacher.
However the careers advisors at my school have now said that we need Units 3/4 as well.
Is anyone able to confirm this? And if not can I still be a teacher if I don't have my Units 3/4.
I'm really terrible at maths and don't want to keep going with it.

[Aaron]

Hi,

There are ways of doing this at a postgraduate level without mathematics, however for the Bachelor of Teaching i'm afraid that it may be something you'll need to do, depending on the university you select.

There is however hope! La Trobe offers the Bachelor of Teaching (link: here) that the pre-requisites state:

VCE Units 3 and 4: study score of at least 30 in English (EAL) or 25 in any other English. VCE Units 1 and 2: two units General Mathematics or Mathematical Methods, or VCE Units 3 and 4 Mathematics (any).

Judging by the above, you'd only need English 3+4, and General 1+2.

If you did decide to do a postgraduate teaching course, you would do a Bachelor's degree in say, Arts, then be admitted into a Master's or GradDip (which I am pretty sure is ending soon).. The only pre-requisites for Master's degrees in Teaching is a undergraduate degree and at least a sub-major in English Studies.

I cannot really comment on other universities, but from La Trobe's pre-requisite description on their site, you may be able to avoid 3+4 maths! All the best.

[Valjean]

To become a high school English teacher there are maybe five options I know of

1. Bachelor of Education (Secondary) [BEd]

2. Bachelor of Arts, majoring in English [BA] > Postgraduate Diploma of Teaching (Secondary) - I think only the University of Melbourne offers this. Look here and here

3. Bachelor of Arts, majoring in English [BA] > Graduate Diploma of Education [GradDipEd]

4. Bachelor of Arts, majoring in English [BA] > Master of Teaching [MTeach]

5. Bachelor of XYZ, not majoring in English [BXyz] > Graduate Certificate of Arts > Master of Teaching/Graduate Diploma of Education/Postgraduate Diploma of Teaching - This isn't very recommendable especially if you already know you want to teach English. It's more for people who start (for example) a Bachelor of Commerce then by the end realise they want to teach Drama/Biology/not commerce.

Going the BA/MTeach route wouldn't require you to have a Maths prerequisite, and I can't imagine doing a BEd (Secondary) with an English major would either.

The Graduate Diploma of Education is slowly being phased out of universities in order to work towards a higher quality of teachers in favour of the Master of Teaching.

Luckily you are surrounded by teachers so you could ask them what they think your best course of action would be. Also you could try messaging Muuru for some advice

[hannahroseillia]

Thanks everyone, that's a big help.