City Teachers - Episode 1

Peter Curran follows three former city high fliers through their year of PGCE teacher training. They were all previously working in the corporate and financial sectors and decided to go into teaching when the 2008 recession hit. Despite their professional experience this will be one of the most challenging years of their lives. According to the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), there has been a fifty per cent increase in applications for teacher training since 2008. Teaching is a competitive and demanding field to enter. Will the ambitions and aspirations of our three career changers match their experience? In programme one we join our trainee teachers on day one of their PGCE year. They are excited, nervous and idealistic. We follow them through the early weeks of their training and find out how the communication skills of the business world translate to the classroom. We join them as they take up their first school placements and start to put their classroom management skills into action. The work load is huge and the experience extremely stressful for most trainees. We learn that the salaries they will earn as teachers will be a quarter of what they earnt previously. We also hear from other members of staff at the schools who have been working alongside and supporting our trainees through their first months. Producer: Sarah Cuddon A Whistledown Production for BBC Radio 4.