Education studies personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

At thirty I sat in a college classroom on Tuesday evenings with eleven other adults, retaking GCSE Maths. Most of us had been told at school, in one way or another, that we were not maths people. Our tutor never mentioned it. She simply started each lesson with a problem from ordinary life, such as splitting a gas bill or working out a recipe for twenty, and let us argue our way to the method. By Christmas a man who had left school at fifteen was explaining ratios to me. I passed with a grade 6, but what stayed with me was the question of why the same subject had felt impossible at fourteen and manageable at thirty. I want to study Education because I want to understand how teaching, school structures and expectations shape who believes they can learn. I am interested in teaching, but I also want to look at education more widely: policy, adult learning and the reasons some young people disengage long before they leave.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

After passing Maths I enrolled on an Access to HE Diploma in Social Science, which I am completing alongside part-time work. Units in sociology and psychology have given me language for things I had only noticed. Studying Bernstein's ideas about restricted and elaborated codes made me think about my own schooling and how classroom talk can favour pupils who already speak in a certain way at home, though our tutor also showed us the criticisms of how the theory has been applied. For my extended project I compared how two local primary schools describe their approach to reading on their websites and in their published policies. It was a small piece of work, but it taught me to read documents critically, to separate what a school says it does from what I could actually evidence, and to reference properly. I have also learnt practical habits that I lacked at sixteen: planning essays weeks ahead, asking for feedback rather than fearing it, and reading beyond the set texts. I have started Reay's Miseducation, which connects closely with my maths class experience. Both policies valued reading for pleasure, but one described children choosing books while the other focused on matching books to assessed levels. I could not tell from a policy how either worked in a classroom. That distinction made me interested in how researchers combine documents with observation and pupils’ own accounts.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

I worked in a supermarket for thirteen years, mostly on tills and customer service. For the last five I trained new starters, often students on their first job or people returning after years at home. I learnt quickly that showing someone once does not work. I broke the job into small steps, let them make mistakes on quiet shifts and checked in after their first busy Saturday. One trainee with dyslexia struggled with the written guide, so I walked her through it on the actual till instead, and she became one of the fastest on the team. Since September I have volunteered one morning a week as a reading helper in a Year 2 class, after a DBS check. I listen to children read, record their progress in their reading records and pass any concerns to the class teacher. I have noticed how much confidence matters; one boy reads far better when he chooses the book. I am careful not to overstate my role, but it has confirmed my interest in how children learn. Outside study I play darts in a pub league, where I keep the scores, which, given my history with maths, still amuses me. Balancing work, study and family has made me organised and determined, and I am ready for full-time degree study.