Those based elsewhere in the labour force can be easily turned on to the idea of becoming a teacher. “I’m sick of my job,” they say to themselves, perhaps after seeing one of those slick Teacher Training Agency ads at the cinema. “Why don’t I do something to help the teacher shortage?” But such enthusiasm is usually dampened when the reality of giving up a salary to become an unpaid PGCE student hits home. Even the pound;6,000 grants for teachers in shortage subjects won’t soften the blow that much.

One solution is the Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP). Providing you already have a degree, and not forgetting those all-important GCSE passes in maths and English, you stand a good chance of getting a place: there are 3,200 available for the next academic year - more than double last year’s quota.

But there is more to it than simply filling in an application form. You must be at least 24 and you need to be put forward by one of the 80-plus designated recommending bodies. These are partnerships between local education authorities and universities that offer initial teacher training and are responsible for delivering the training programme. Individual schools can also act as recommending bodies and can apply directly to the training agency for a place.

Your last hurdle is finding a school that is prepared to employ you as an unqualified teacher. Even when a school is prepared to take on a student, funding is not always available. Indeed, earlier this year The TES highlighted the plight of Stephen O’Neill, a would-be trainee whose recommending body failed to win him a place on the scheme. This meant that he was ineligible for the pound;13,000 salary. But the 47-year-old former fashion designer was so determined to become a teacher that he decided to pay his own way. That way, Gothic Mede school in Arlesey, Bedfordshire, could get a pound;4,000 training grant.

The scheme is clearly proving very popular, and it has the backing of the National Union of Teachers, although the union’s head of education, John Bangs, says that such trainees need more support. “They do not get mentoring from an experienced teacher in the way that you do on a PGCE course,” he says. “Graduate teachers are good at what they do but are not always confident about what they do.”

The variation in levels of support between schools is perhaps the most obvious flaw in the programme. In some schools, particularly primaries, trainees have a close working relationship with other qualified teachers, while the less fortunate, usually in secondaries, sometimes find themselves being used as easy and cheap relief cover.

What is not in doubt is the scheme’s ability to bring people from a diverse range of backgrounds into the profession. Desmond Malone, deputy head of Deptford Green school in south-east London, is very positive about the scheme because it attracts a very different type of applicant. “It’s tapping into a group of people often in their thirties and forties who would not do a PGCE, and we end up with a well-trained, usually more mature person with considerable experience of life before they go into teaching,” he says. “Those who have gone through already have become very successful classroom practitioners.”

Mr Malone’s school had five trainees last year and four this year. He says it has been a learning process for both sides. Last year, workload was an issue and one trainee went back to his old job as a police officer. “It hasn’t all been smooth sailing,” he says.

Richard Warne is head of Ashburton community school in Croydon, south London, another school that has taken the GTP plunge and found the experience worthwhile. “Any means of getting more skilled individuals who are good at working with children into classrooms is a good thing”, says Mr Warne.

Clearly, learning on the job is a major characteristic of the programme, but not everyone agrees with it. One recent posting on the TES website’s staffroom declared that it was “immoral” to put an untrained teacher in a classroom. “Why must children put up with your inexperience and lack of training in the meantime?” the contributor asked.

But Polly Warren, 28, who is a GTP trainee, doesn’t see it that way. Ms Warren worked in public relations for seven years before losing faith in that “fickle” world. She began by helping out one day a week at Belleville primary school in Clapham, south London. She enjoyed the experience so much that she decided to train as a teacher. In her view, people with experience of another walk of life bring many different skills to the classroom. “I don’t think it’s a case of putting inexperienced teachers in front of children at all,” she says.

She only started training in September, but already she speaks positively about the programme. Without it, she would not have been able to afford to retrain, and she believes that going back to college would have been testing. “I learn much better by doing than listening to a lecturer, and you learn so much so quickly this way,” she says.

Of course, there are no lectures to attend, but this means lots of reading and independent study, which she admits can be trying. “I have a mentor but its mostly up to me,” she says.

Perrin Fox, 45, had a different path into the scheme. The single mother of three teenagers completed a history degree at Plymouth University in 1999 and then worked for a couple of years. She says she had always wanted to teach but could not afford to do a PGCE. But then she found out about the GTP on the Teacher Training Agency’s website and completed the course earlier this year. “I thought it was a very good way of doing it,” she says. “I had the full support of the school, although it was sometimes the blind leading the blind.”

The GTP salary was a big incentive and was just enough to survive, says Ms Fox, who lives in Devon. The only thing she is not happy about is that she has not yet managed to secure a job, although she hopes that situation will soon change. Certainly, heads and governors seem to be treating teachers who have taken the GTP route as the equals of BEd or PGCE graduates when making appointments, but the possibility of discrimination remains a fear among some.

Polly Warren believes that this view would be less likely if those who complete the programme were given some sort of award in the same way as their PGCE counterparts. For one thing, GTPers have a year’s experience in the classroom under their belt at the end of the scheme - and that’s an asset not to be sniffed at.

Teacher Training Agency www.canteach.gov.uk