Adding Primary Education registration to Secondary (Subject) Education registration: case studies

Clare Bryden

Full Registration in Secondary (English) Education (2000), added Full Registration in Primary Educaation (2019)

Coming from a family of teachers, Clare always knew she loved teaching and that she was going to be a teacher. She really loved english and literature, so was pulled to becoming a secondary english teacher. Clare went on to become a chartered teacher and then a principal teacher for literacy with an authority remit. Her work included secondary school colleagues, but most of the work was in the primary sector. After 3 years she had learned a huge amount about primary education, working with different schools and types of classes in primary. Clare decided to look at how to change her registration to primary.  Firstly, she looked up the GTC Scotland information and was pleased to see she could do this in a way that didn’t mean going back to college for a year, a way that allowed her to do this while gaining the practical knowledge in a primary school setting.  

This involved her setting up the kind of support she would need from a headteacher supporter, somebody who essentially was going to guarantee that she met the Professional Standards required.  She approached the headteacher of a small local primary school and worked with her to set out a plan. This involved looking at the Standard for Provisional Registration to identify a professional learning plan for all the primary specific aspects around knowledge and understanding, skills in the classroom, assessments etc.  

Using the Toolkit – Secondary to Primary, her action plan helped identify where the gaps were and what she needed to do. For example, she had quite a lot of skills such as speaking french, and knew a lot about the theory around maths and numeracy, but Clare hadn't had any experience in teaching these.  

Initially Clare went into the school for a series of half days, once a week, observing and helping in the classroom. She took time off school to go through the planning and to go in to teach fulltime in the primary school.  The headteacher came in and observed regularly, followed up by professional learning conversations. Finally, the headteacher completed a declaration that Clare had met the Standard for Full Registration and she got Full Registration in Primary Education in 2019.

Clare subsequently went on to become a primary headteacher and has more recently moved into a national role supporting literacy.