The Post Compulsory Education and Training Network was established in 2005, when I was in the 2nd Year of my Cert.Ed. This was a turbulent year of my life as I was pregnant and trying to juggle working full time in a female closed prison, with evening Further Education whilst being kicked mercilessly from the inside! I got to a point during the final term of my Cert.Ed when I just wanted to give up. My priorities in life had changed and I was unsure if teaching was something I REALLY wanted to do. With the support, persuasion & veiled bullying of my course leader, I worked hard through the final term and passed my teaching qualification with a mixture of relief and pride and then immediately went on to give birth to a gorgeous little girl.
Whilst on maternity leave I realised that I missed teaching and it was definitely my vocation moving forward. I also came to the realisation that the struggle to complete my Cert Ed was not because of the impending labour, but because I lacked experience within teaching so did not really have a clue how to write an essay around the heading of “Alternative learning strategies”. At this point I trawled the internet to see if there were any sites that provided help to struggling FE teachers. There were a few sites that I came across, but none, at that time, who were UK based with a focus on FE so PCET Network was born.
My husband, an I.T genius, built the site under my stringent supervision and the concept around the Network was “if you build it… they will come!” Unfortunately, nothing happened for a year but I refused to give up! If I needed online support then so did many others!
I sent out a mailer randomly to colleges all over the UK and overnight the site came alive. Over a period of 2 years PCET Network attracted over 2000 users with a small percentage of them being active within the forums and writing articles. This was what I had been hoping for. From there the site has continued to grow.
PCET Network is hosted and runs free from profit. It is a site that FE practitioners can use to ask questions, share good practice and feel part of a community who understands the nature of Further Education.
We are currently fortunate enough to have leading FE lecturers and course leaders actively using the site and in some cases working as moderators on the Network, so you can be sure that your questions will be answered promptly.
I hope that you find PCET Network useful and I look forward to your contributions and comments.
Sharon Abbott
loading...
loading...
