What skills and experience we're looking for
Job Purpose
1. Drive the minibus to transport students and staff in accordance with the Rules and Regulations of the Highway Code and in accordance with good practice provided by the County Council’s Code of Practice No 14 ‘Policy on Driving on Local Authority Business’ to maintain student, staff and public safety whilst on the highway.
2. Provide basic maintenance of the minibus e.g. oil levels, cleaning of vehicle to maintain basic working order and prevent unnecessary deterioration of the vehicle
Responsible to
Ignite Learning Centre coordinator
Grade (including hours and weeks worked)
Grade 4, Pay Point 6 £12.55 per hour with rolled up-holiday pay (or £14.06 per hour with pro-rata holiday allowance)
15 hours per week, term time only (1.5 hours per morning & afternoon)
Core hours are 8.30 – 10.00 am and 2.00 – 3.30 pm.
All routes will be subject to change dependant on student numbers at any time. Additional hours as required paid on a casual basis.
Conditions of service
Local Government conditions of service
The activities and responsibilities listed below are examples of the type of tasks that are expected of the post holder.
Roles and responsibilities
• Drive the minibus in accordance with the Regulations of the Highway Code, County Council’s Code of Practice for minibus drivers and training provided to maintain student, staff and public safety whilst on the highway.
• Provide daily visual checks and basic maintenance for the vehicle as required.
• Report any vehicle defects, faults, incidents and accidents.
• Be responsible for the cleanliness of vehicle inside and out and ensuring the vehicle is in a clean and roadworthy condition before and after use.
• Refuel vehicle as required.
• Maintain accurate records of vehicle usage.
• Maintain and help to promote a good company image e.g. working attire should be worn at all times and kept in a clean and tidy condition.
• Work within Health and Safety guidelines, fire regulations and other County and Academy policies that may be issued from time to time.
• Undertake any other associated duties as required by the manager e.g. collection or delivery of equipment as required.
Training
• Attend regular training courses as identified and agreed e.g. Minibus Driver Awareness Scheme (MiDAS) training
• First Aid at Work
This post will be subject to an enhanced DBS disclosure
Values and Attitudes
Essential
• Clean Driving licence
• Pleasant approachable personality
• An ability to communicate with a range of people
• Patient manner
• Ability to work on own initiative and as part of a team
• Reliable and trustworthy
• Honest, sense of responsibility and confidentiality
• Flexible approach to working arrangements
• Willing to undertake training as appropriate
Desirable
• Experience of driving a minibus
• Sense of humour
• Experience of working with young people
• Interest in sport
Experience, Skills and Knowledge
Essential
• Hold a current, clean and valid driving licence
• Be 25+ (for insurance purposes)
• Capability to maintain accurate vehicle and user records
• Competent to undertake daily and weekly vehicle checks and carry out basic maintenance
Desirable
• Midas trained
• PCV licence holder
What the school offers its staff
Putting Your Trust in Our Trust
We believe in your development. Everything we do is about creating a team of committed professionals who share our ambition for young people. If you believe in this too, we are committed to providing an exciting, enjoyable and rewarding working environment.
Coaching
Coaching is integral to our success. We support colleagues through coaching; enabling deep reflection, which has allowed us to build a bold, creative and aspirational culture, where collaboration with peers and new approaches to practice are encouraged.
Personal Improvement Plan versus Performance Management
Instead of the usual performance management, we encourage our staff to identify aspirational targets through our ‘Personal Improvement Plan’ (PIP) process. With your coach, you will look to make significant progress in a critical area of your practice; we believe in valuing the process of improvement not pass or fail numerical targets.
Health and Wellbeing Strategies
Having happy and healthy staff is key to a successful organisation. The Trust is committed to:
providing employees with a safe, healthy and supportive environment in which to work
recognising that the health and wellbeing of our employees is important
providing a supportive workplace culture where individuals healthy lifestyle choices are valued and encouraged
We are committed to supporting colleagues to overcome the stigma and discrimination of mental health issues within the work place. To show our commitment to this we have publicly signed up to ‘Mindful Employer’ and the ‘Charter for Employers who are Positive about Mental Health’.
We believe it is important that we are role models to our students of how to be a healthy adult. We actively promote the importance of a work life balance, offering support to staff on managing stress and workload, as well as a physical activity programme. Access to coaching, counselling and supervision is also available to all staff.
Equality and Equal Opportunities
Our Trust and its schools are committed to ensuring equality of opportunity in line with the Equality Act 2010. The Trust seeks to reduce disadvantages, discrimination and inequalities of opportunity, and promote diversity in terms of its students, workforce and our wider communities we serve.
Presumed Professionalism
We have a ‘Presumed Professionalism’ ethos across the Trust. Our staff are professional educators and we recognise the need to support staff to enable a healthy work life balance to allow maximum impact whilst working with our young people and each other. We achieve this by allowing staff to sign out during their free periods, as long as professional duties are not affected. See our policy for further details.
Development of Professional Capital and Excellence
As a Trust we always look to invest in our staff and pride ourselves on our ‘home grown talent’. We pride ourselves on this and believe this has the biggest impact on how our staff understand their communities and make a difference to the lives of our young people.
Quite simply, our aim is to employ people who match our ethos and values and enable them to truly collaborate with colleagues across the Trust so that they are satisfied professionally. We provide outstanding training pathways which draw on excellence both within and outside of our Trust to enable you to build your professional capital.
Examples of the many opportunities we encourage staff to take up externally include:
The National Professional Qualification for Senior Leadership (NPQSL)
The National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH)
The National Professional Qualification for Middle Leadership (NPQML)
The Outstanding Teacher Programme (OTP)
Initial Teacher Training (ITT)
Pathways are available at apprenticeship level, NQT, aspiring middle leader, Lead Practitioner and aspiring senior leader level. Some of these courses are lead by staff within the Trust and others are externally accredited. In addition, the Trust provides the opportunity of becoming an associate SLT member, enabling middle leaders to gain insight and experience of leadership at the highest level within a school.
Support staff have their own Personal Improvement Plan that they use as a tool to create a bespoke professional development plan. All support staff also receive Coaching and training opportunities, in order to help them feel empowered and in charge of their own development.
Across the Trust we pride ourselves on equal opportunities for all staff, irrespective of background, gender, disability, religion, sexual orientation or age.
Great Access to Progression and Leadership Responsibility
Further evidence of our investment in ‘home grown talent’ is that 86% of our TLR holders have been internal appointments. We have clear professional progression pathways within the CPD offered throughout the year at all levels within the Trust.
Collaboration Across all Schools
We are developing relationships across our Trust to enable collaboration to support learning and teaching outcomes. In addition, we are able to offer a joint CPD programme to draw upon expertise across the Trust. Staff work and meet regularly in teams across schools in the Trust and we hold an annual Strategic Planning Day, where each member of the Trust work together.
Sabbatical and Flexible Working Policies
We have developed a unique sabbatical policy to support staff to develop their interests. For some, this has been to develop professionally, whilst others have taken this time to experience travel with their family. See our policy for further details.
Flexible working arrangements are also promoted across the Trust where possible, to enable our staff to manage their work life and family commitments.
Strong Induction Process
It is important to us that every member of staff has the right start to working in our Trust. The importance of a good induction is invaluable for new starters irrespective of previous experience. To support this, we have a New Staff Induction Day before the start of term, which enables colleagues to get a real understanding of what the school is about and what it means to be part of the Trust. This day also prepares new staff for our training (conference) days at the beginning of the Autumn term. In addition to this ALL staff are invited to visit a series of lessons across the school year.
ECT Support
Where possible we try to ensure that ECTs have reduced teaching loads to allow them more opportunities for CPD throughout the school week. This also allows for peer to peer observations and additional coaching to take place to develop their practice.
3D Networks
3D Networks are an opportunity for faculties to share good practice and new ideas with colleagues across the school, based on our unique 3D Learning and Teaching model.
Attendance of Staff
Our staff are committed to their roles and ensure that students are supported to maximise their outcomes. Levels of attendance are exceptionally high across all staff and well above national averages in the education sector and beyond.
Commitment to safeguarding
Our organisation is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. We expect all staff, volunteers and trustees to share this commitment. Our recruitment process follows the keeping children safe in education guidance. Offers of employment may be subject to the following checks (where relevant): childcare disqualification Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) medical online and social media prohibition from teaching right to work satisfactory references suitability to work with children You must tell us about any unspent conviction, cautions, reprimands or warnings under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975.