WANTING to become a teacher is not unusual for people who enjoy working with youngsters and want a structured career.

And like many professions, the routes to becoming qualified have gradually evolved. Now a Blackburn woman has become one of the first in East Lancashire to graduate from one of the new paths that has opened, with a Flexible Post Graduate Certificate of Education.

The teaching degree gives people with busy lives the chance to learn in their own time over several years.

Catherine Rasheed, 37, of Branch Road, Lower Darwen is a former student of Everton, the old Queens Park High School. She has been working as a nursery nurse since 1992 and has helped out at a series of special educational schools.

After her own study journey of more than 10 years she has finally graduated and is working at Witton Park High School in Blackburn as a geography teacher.

Mother-of-three Catherine said: "The best part is having my own classroom and finally being able to do my own displays.

"The support I have had has been brilliant from both my school and family. At first I just pottered about not really knowing what to do but gradually things fell in to place and now I am very proud to be a teacher.

"I get a real buzz out of teaching. Taking a little longer is better than coming straight out of university and then dropping out after a couple of years because you had no real idea what life is like in schools."

Catherine started with an advanced diploma in childcare education, gaining points that counted towards a degree.

She then launched into a combined honours degree in English and geography at St Mary's College, Blackburn, one evening a week for three years, with lecturers from Liverpool's Hope University. During the day she worked as a support assistant at Witton Park.

In 2003 she graduated but still lacked the essential post graduate teaching status.

She added: "I was on a field trip one day and someone mentioned about the flexible PGCE which I knew nothing about. You still apply like everyone else does for university but it is like a fast track two year distance learning course.

"You have to have experience of teaching as it is all about past experience and past knowledge. You have to prove every observation and attend everything you possibly can and to get on you have to already be working at a school."

"The hardest part has been juggling everything. "

The Graduate Training Programme is another recently evolved path into teaching for busy professionals but, unlike doing a standard degree in teaching or even a post graduate PGCE to convert a non-teaching degree, this programme is based in schools.