Back into education

After taking a year off. Trying to figure out what I want to do in life, I have now started down a new path. One with no guarantee of success, and a good chance of failure, because of the rules the government have set for going into this occupation.

So, I have decided that I want to become a teacher. Ideally teaching at college level, though to do this I have to achieve a PGCE in secondary education. The first issue I face is getting onto a PGCE course, and that is rather a big challenge. Yes, I may have a degree and a master’s degree, but one of the requisites to get onto the course is to have a maths and English GCSE.

Sadly, I have neither, and this is a bit of a problem. I did do an English equivalent qualification back in 1997, but I have been told that this is not applicable in 2024. So I have to go back and start all over again. Now I know, that English is vitally important to become a teacher. It is a tool that is used every day and having a good level of English knowledge is just common sense.

What has me scratching my head is having to have a maths qualification. If I was teaching maths, or the sciences, it makes sense. But I want to teach photography and video production, and after 20 years of being in both industries. I cannot think of a time, where I will have needed GCSE maths. I am not saying that maths is not used in these industries, they are, for working out stops of light, f-stops, measuring distances, but certainly, at no point have I needed to have a maths GCSE to do those tasks.

So, what is the issue? You have a master’s degree, getting a maths GCSE shouldn’t be that hard? Well, if I was normal, it probably wouldn’t be an issue, but I am not. Along with all my other neurodivergent issues, come dyscalculia, and this presents various issues, which make passing a GCSE in maths really, really hard. This is compounded by my ADHD, which makes getting short term information into my long term memory really hard. So as soon as I learn something like fractions, sequences, or factors, I then forget completely, am back at square one.

At the moment, I am a little worried, but I hope that over time, I will be able to pick things up.