PGCE Government bursaries - scrapped for one year only in 2011 - totally unfair

Lala2000 · 25 August 2011 at 11:56AM

Hello Everyone.

Earlier this year the government made the decision to scrap bursaries in their entirety for the majority of PGCE courses starting in September this year. This decision was made extremely late in the day, once all applications had been made & interviews attended. When the government announced their decision is stated that the reason was that the bursaries were no longer required to attract teachers & were therefore not value for money. This made the PGCE year impossible for some people, who had to turn down offers that were made to them. For others, they had to make the difficult decision to go ahead, but the year will undoubtedly be a huge struggle financially, as it is impossible to have a part time job during the PGCE year. However, as they want to teach it's what they have to do.

Imagine those students anger then, when it was announced that the government are planning on re-introducing bursaries for those starting ALL PGCEs in 2012 (and much larger ones than previously too!) , having scrapped them for this year only. This is completely unfair. This year's cohort have been penalised simply for choosing to undertake their PGCE this year.

Someone has kindly started a petition against this online (well against them being scrapped for one year only really), so I thought I'd share it here with you all. If you think this is unfair then please sign the petition! Please find the link below:

It won't let me post the link to the petition but if you go to the governments new petition website & search 'PGCE bursary changes are unfair and need to be reconsidered!' it will come up.

Many thanks!