(L)earning to Teach: Financial inequities facing trainee physical education teachers in England

The aim of this research was to better understand whether the funding system for Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) Physical education (PE) trainees would have unforeseen and unintended consequences on their working practices. Specifically, if the lack of a government scholarship or bursary would necessitate students to take on additional employment (and therefore earn) whilst learning to be a PE teacher. An online survey that included both closed- (quantitative) and open-ended questions (qualitative) were employed. Participants were recruited through convenience sampling and the total number of respondents was 439 of which 82 (18.7%) were PE trainees. For quantitative data, all questions had categorical an-swers, with most requiring either a “yes” or “no” response. Using IBM SPSS Statistics version 28, crosstabs were performed to examine whether the frequency distribu-tions differed between PE trainees and UK government subject clusters (e.g., English, mathematics/statistics, science) in relation to whether they were undertaking addi-tional paid work during their PGCE course and/or were not in receipt of funding (e.g., tuition or maintenance fee loan, support from other sources [e.g., state benefits, friends, family]). Second, differences in relation to sample characteristics for PE trainees who reported undertaking additional paid work during their course were examined. All differences were assessed using Chi-square tests (i.e., categorical data). Findings show that, compared to all other subject clusters, a significantly higher proportion of respondents training to teach PE (primary and secondary) re-ported working during their PGCE course, as well as accessed a tuition fee and/or a maintenance loan to pay for their studies (p<.001). Of those training to teach PE who reported undertaking additional paid work, a significantly higher proportion worked during holiday- and term-time weekends, mostly working between 1-9 or 10-19 hours per week (p≤.004). At the end of the survey three free text questions allowed participants to provide written answers. Miles and Huberman’s (1994) ana-lytic actions were used to code the data inductively and deductively. Overall, it was found that many PGCE PE students “struggle[d] to survive” as the financial support available to them was not sufficient. For some, this meant living at home and draw-ing financial support from family and partners. For others, it meant “work[ing] along-side my degree and …really struggle[ing] with the workload and working part time to pay for the necessities.” Taken together, the findings suggest that many aspiring PE teachers are balancing learning with earning to “cover the cost of rent, bills and travel.” This means they have had to make hard choices about which version of work to undertake at a given time which “for some people means working 7 days a week.” As teacher educators we need to be mindful of the new demands on students and plan programmes accordingly.