Familiar with our rehearsal room approaches? Then our Intermediate Certificate course offers you an opportunity to extend your skills and knowledge to the next level.

Upcoming Course Dates

20-21 March 2026 and 3 July 2026

Cost

£450

HOW TO BOOK

To book email learning.boxoffice@rsc.org.uk or call the Learning Hotline on 01789 331259 (midday-6pm, Monday – Friday, excluding Bank Holidays)

Eligibility

To attend one of our Intermediate Certificate courses, you must have completed at least three days of training with the RSC within the last five years. This could include:

• Foundation Certificate course
• Three INSET days in your school with the RSC
• Three days of training through our Associate Schools programme

Our Certificate courses are designed for primary and secondary school teachers, although are open to any educator or support staff who work with Shakespeare.

Professional Outcomes

In addition to supporting research-informed and evidence-based professional development through an enjoyable and interactive day at the RSC exploring Shakespeare, teachers on our Certificate courses work towards specific professional outcomes.

Completing our Intermediate Certificate in Teaching Shakespeare course will support you to develop the knowledge, confidence and skills to…

1. Teach the form and structure of essential elements of Shakespeare’s language such as verse (including iambic pentameter), dramatic prose, and rhetoric.
2. Teach your students to understand how metaphor, antithesis, imagery and other literary and dramatic devices shape key aspects of Shakespeare’s plays, including character, setting, themes and action.
3. Examine the social and historical context of Shakespeare’s texts and how they inform contemporary understanding whilst recognising and challenging the 400-year-old cultural attitudes present, including racism and sexism.
4. Edit Shakespeare’s text for developmentally appropriate learning contexts to design accessible and impactful lessons.
5. Incorporate effective challenge and progression in your lessons on Shakespeare’s plays, particularly for higher attaining students.
6. Enable students to make evaluative choices that combine evidence in the text with their own creative interpretations.

Course Content

• Deepening understanding: further work on RSC rehearsal room pedagogy to explore ways to approach Shakespeare’s plots, language and characters with your students.
• Contemporary context: introducing ways of working that ensure your students can engage with Shakespeare as a writer with contemporary relevance to our world today.
• Anti-bias and anti-racist approaches: providing tools for recognising and challenging the prejudices present in the plays and throughout their 400-year-old histories.
• Understanding language: an in-depth investigation of the language, rhythm, and structures of Shakespeare's text and how to plan learning about them in our classrooms with a particular focus on stretching and supporting high attainers.
• Rhetoric and the art of persuasion: experiment with Elizabethan/Jacobean rhetoric and how understanding the ways Shakespeare structures arguments in his plays supports our pupils' learning.
• Adapting and staging Shakespeare: by exploring interpretive choices made on RSC stages, develop ideas on adapting approaches to different classrooms or learning spaces.
• Research-led and evidence-based: engage with the evidence-base about the impact of this way of working and arts learning more generally.
• Reflective task: develop abilities to capture and reflect on how rehearsal room approaches affect student attitudes and outcomes through a reflective planning and teaching task back in your school between the 2nd and 3rd days of this course.

QUESTIONS?

Please visit our dedicated FAQs page.

If you cannot find the answer you're looking for, please get in touch: teachers.courses@rsc.org.uk