What Is a PGCE? Postgraduate Certificate in Education Explained for English Teachers

What Is a PGCE?

PGCE stands for Postgraduate Certificate in Education. It is an academic teaching qualification awarded by a university, usually gained alongside teacher training in the UK. The Department for Education is explicit that “you do not need a PGCE to be a qualified teacher in England”, because the legal requirement is qualified teacher status, not the certificate.

Key takeaways

• PGCE means Postgraduate Certificate in Education. It is an academic award from a university, not a licence to teach.
• The Department for Education states plainly that you do not need a PGCE to be a qualified teacher in England.
• Two different qualifications share the initials. The Postgraduate Certificate in Education sits at master’s level, and the Professional Graduate Certificate in Education sits at honours level.
• A PGCE can carry up to 60 credits at master’s level, against the 180 credits usually needed for a full master’s degree.
• A PGCE is not a TEFL qualification and does not train you to teach English as a foreign language.
• For teaching English abroad, online or in a language centre, employers name a TEFL qualification and a verifiable level. They rarely mention a PGCE at all.

What Does PGCE Stand For, and Why Are There Two Versions?

PGCE stands for Postgraduate Certificate in Education. The complication, and it is one almost nobody explains, is that the same four letters are used for two qualifications pitched at different academic levels.

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, the independent body that maintains the UK’s qualifications frameworks, sets out the distinction. A Professional Graduate Certificate in Education is “pitched at Honours level”, aligning with the framework descriptor at level 6. A Postgraduate Certificate in Education is “pitched at Master’s level”, aligning at level 7. Both, in the agency’s words, combine “professional training leading to Qualified teacher status (QTS) and a course of academic study leading to an academic qualification”.

So one set of initials, two academic altitudes, and universities are expected to make clear which one they are offering. If you are comparing courses and the level is not stated anywhere in the prospectus, that is a question worth asking before you apply rather than after.

The second half of that agency quotation matters just as much. A PGCE bundles two separate things together: the academic study, and the professional training. People then treat the bundle as a single item, which is how most of the confusion in this area begins.

PGCE or QTS: Which One Does the Job Actually Require?

This is the question that decides whether a PGCE is relevant to you, and the answer is not the one most applicants assume.

Qualified teacher status is the professional status you need to hold a qualified teacher post in a maintained school in England. In the government’s own wording, it is “a legal requirement to teach in many English schools”. A PGCE is the academic certificate that often, but not always, sits alongside it.

The Department for Education’s own service is blunt about this. On its guidance for people asking what a PGCE is, it states that “you do not need a PGCE to be a qualified teacher in England”, and that teacher training courses lead to one of three outcomes: QTS only, QTS with a PGCE, or a PGCE without QTS.

Read that list again, because it is the whole point. You can gain the status without the certificate. You can gain the certificate without the status. Most people gain both at once and never discover they were two things.

If a school post depends on it, confirm the status. If a university, an overseas employer or a further study route asks for the academic award, confirm the certificate. Our guide to what qualified teacher status is and where it is legally required sets out which settings can and cannot employ teachers without it.

The Published Facts on a PGCE, and Where They Come From

Everything in the table below is quoted from an official or independent source rather than paraphrased from experience, because this is the sort of topic where confident second hand summaries are usually wrong.

The last row is there for comparison rather than competition. A regulated Level 5 qualification on the Regulated Qualifications Framework and a level 7 PGCE are not rivals, because they are not doing the same job. One trains you to teach English to speakers of other languages. The other is an academic award attached to school teacher training in the UK. The levels tell you about academic demand, not about which one an employer will ask you for.

How to cite this data. Attribute each row to the source named in the right hand column, and give the check date of 23 September 2026, since government guidance pages are revised without notice and the qualification levels list is maintained by GOV.UK rather than frozen. The exact published wording is at the GOV.UK list of qualification levels. If you are quoting this comparison rather than the underlying sources, cite The TEFL Institute and the same check date.

How Do You Get a PGCE?

Through a university, as part of postgraduate teacher training, and normally with a bachelor’s degree already in hand.

The route is an application to an accredited provider, a period of academic study, and school placements assessed against the professional standards. Courses run full time or part time. The Department for Education’s service notes that a PGCE “can award up to 60 credits at master’s level which you could use towards a full master’s qualification”, which is usually 180 credits, so a PGCE is a third of a master’s rather than a master’s in itself.

That last detail is one of the most commonly misstated facts in the whole area. A PGCE is not a master’s degree. It is a certificate at master’s level, which is a different claim, and the credit figures are the reason.

Do You Need a PGCE to Teach English Abroad?

No. In several years of reading job adverts for this market, the PGCE almost never appears in one.

Language centres, online platforms and government placement schemes ask for three things in some combination: a degree where the visa rules demand one, a recognised English language teaching qualification, and the right to work. A PGCE satisfies the first of those if it sits on top of a bachelor’s degree, and it does not satisfy the second at all, because it is not a qualification in teaching English as a foreign language.

International schools are the exception worth naming. For subject and homeroom posts overseas, a recognised teaching licence and an academic teaching qualification carry real weight, and a PGCE with QTS is a strong pairing in that market. But those are school teaching jobs that happen to be abroad, not English language teaching jobs, and the two markets recruit on different paperwork.

It is only fair to state the reverse, since we sell the other thing. A TEFL qualification will not make you a qualified teacher in an English state school, and no amount of marketing changes that. What it does is open the roles where teaching English is the job.

PGCE or TEFL: What Employers Actually Name

Four credentials, four different purposes, and a great deal of avoidable confusion between them.

The practical difference between the bottom two rows is verification. A regulated qualification carries a number on a public register, so an employer can check it in a minute. An unregulated certificate rests on the provider’s own reputation, which may be perfectly good, but is a different kind of assurance.

The practical difference between the top two rows is the one this page exists to fix. A PGCE is paperwork from a university. QTS is permission from the state. They usually arrive together and they are not the same thing.

Where a PGCE Genuinely Pays Off

There are three situations where a PGCE earns its considerable cost in time and fees.

The first is a career in UK schools. If you want to teach a subject in a maintained school in England, you need QTS, and the postgraduate route that delivers it most commonly delivers a PGCE alongside it. Taking the academic award while you are there is usually sensible.

The second is international schools. The British curriculum international sector recruits heavily from UK trained teachers, and a PGCE with QTS is close to a standard expectation at the better paying end of that market.

The third is further study. Those 60 master’s level credits are real and portable. If you expect to complete a master’s in education later, starting with a third of it already banked is a genuine head start, and it is the main reason people choose a level 7 PGCE over a level 6 one.

Where a PGCE Is the Wrong Tool

And three where it is not the qualification to buy.

If your plan is to teach English abroad for a year or two, a PGCE is a long and expensive answer to a question nobody asked. The employer will want a TEFL qualification, a degree if the visa needs one, and a clean background check.

If your plan is online teaching, the same applies with more force, because online platforms publish their requirements openly and almost none of them list a PGCE.

If you are already a qualified teacher and simply want to move into English language teaching, the missing piece is subject training, not another academic certificate. That is also a good moment to think about what continuing professional development means for teachers, since a short specialist course often does more for an application than a second general qualification.

Can You Hold a PGCE and a TEFL Qualification?

Yes, and a good number of teachers do, usually in that order and for sound reasons.

A PGCE with QTS gives you the school classroom. A TEFL qualification gives you the language classroom, and with it the summer schools, the pre sessional university courses, the language centres abroad and the online market. Teachers who hold both tend to describe the TEFL qualification as the thing that made their CV portable.

There is no sequencing rule. Plenty of people take a TEFL qualification first, teach abroad for a few years, and only then decide whether UK school teaching is what they want. That is a perfectly reasonable order, and it has the advantage of testing the assumption cheaply before committing to a postgraduate year.

How to Read a Job Advert Properly

Three questions, in order, and they take about a minute.

• Does it name a status or a certificate? QTS is a status. A PGCE, a CELTA and a TEFL diploma are certificates. Answer the one in front of you.
• Does it state a level? A stated level means a regulated qualification, and a regulated qualification has a reference number you can look up on a public register.
• Who awards the qualification you are considering? If no awarding organisation is named anywhere on the provider’s site, that absence is the answer.

The full set of acronyms, and which of them are qualifications rather than descriptions, is laid out on our TEFL qualifications and terminology page.
There is a third route worth knowing about if you teach adults rather than schoolchildren. QTLS, or Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills, is the professional status of the further education sector in England, and it is earned by demonstrating existing practice rather than by taking a postgraduate course.
The nearest relative of this qualification is the PGDE, and the two are not simply longer and shorter versions of one another. In Scotland a PGDE is the accredited graduate route into teaching rather than an academic award sitting beside a separate status. Our guide to what a PGDE is in Scotland, England and Hong Kong sets out where the two part company.

Your Next Step

If your goal is a qualified teacher post in a UK school, the route is postgraduate teacher training, and the Department for Education’s Get Into Teaching service is the place to begin. Nothing we sell is a substitute for it, and we would rather say so plainly than sell you the wrong thing.

If your goal is to teach English abroad, online or in a language centre, the qualification employers name is a TEFL qualification with a level you can verify. Our 180 hour Ofqual regulated Level 5 TEFL Diploma is listed on the Ofqual register as 610/1571/4, awarded by Highfield Qualifications, organisation number RN5219. You can check that number before you pay, which is exactly what a regulated qualification is for.