What skills and experience we're looking for
Following the appointment of our long-serving Head of Sixth Form to a new role in another school we seek an experienced, highly effective teacher and leader to join our Senior Leadership Team as Head of Sixth Form to make a pivotal contribution to the strategic leadership and day-to-day management of our ALPS Gold Progress Award 2024 Sixth Form, ensuring that it delivers outstanding academic outcomes, pastoral care, and enrichment opportunities. The postholder will strongly promote the Sixth Form’s vision and place within the whole school, and further foster our culture of high expectations, academic excellence, and personal development, which includes high levels of Oxbridge and Russell Group admissions.
The opportunity exists for the successful candidate to be supported to complete the Level 6 Diploma in Careers Guidance and Development if appropriate
The school offers outstanding induction, training and career development opportunities through HISP Learning Partnership. Staff tell us we offer a very supportive and welcoming working environment
What the school offers its staff
Highcliffe is a remarkable school with a special atmosphere. We are very highly respected in our community, with whole generations of families coming here for over 50 years from Christchurch and the New Forest. Former students, current students and their parents frequently speak of their powerful emotional bonds to our school lasting a lifetime. Always popular, and usually over-subscribed, in the last two years our identity and success has attracted a rapidly growing number of admissions requests for Year 7. Although we have raised our PAN twice in recent years, demand for places still exceeds availability. This is a result of our caring and aspirational ethos combined with our engaging curriculum and excellent extra-curricular opportunities, although our track record of exam success is surely another factor. Our students are lovely young people to work with who respond enthusiastically to good teaching and are keen to learn.
Former students go on to work in international finance, law, education, politics, engineering, medicine, science, and in the Paris fashion houses, or as great chefs, carers, artists, musicians, mechanics, gardeners and much more – but not before they have thrived at Highcliffe academically, creatively and socially. We have an excellent record of success placing students into the top universities in their chosen field. Every year for the last 12 years at least one of our Sixth Form students have, for example, gone on to study at either Oxford or Cambridge universities; in recent years two or three have. Our Sixth Form achieved an ALPS Gold Award in 2024 for value-added outcomes inside the top 25% nationally. We have successful programmes for students accessing careers in medicine, the law and engineering. We are an outwardly focused community with extensive school links in France, Spain and Japan including a unique exchange programme with a school in Hiroshima.
Our teaching staff are highly experienced, knowledgeable professionals who work together superbly. Our SEND, pastoral, clerical, financial, technical and site staff, who form a good team, are also extremely good at their jobs and committed to the school’s success. We are a friendly, welcoming and supportive environment in which to work or learn, located in a great part of the country. As part of the HISP Multi Academy Trust we offer our team extensive opportunities for professional development; direct collaborative working with Thornden School in Chandler’s Ford and more widely across the Trust region; and career progression routes associated with our development as a regional Hub for school improvement and professional development delivering NPQs, the local ECT programme, and the Science Learning Partnership. We are a happy and upbeat school, characterised by warm and trusting relationships between staff and students. We recently completed a £1.8 million capital project improving heating and hot water, and in December 2022 successfully entered the School Rebuilding Programme to replace 18 classrooms with brand new buildings.
We have a strong focus on staff well-being and an exceptional in-house professional development programme for teachers, ensuring that Highcliffe is a positive and supportive working environment for our staff. Visitors and new staff remark on how we feel like ‘one big family’.
Commitment to safeguarding
HISP MAT is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff to share in the commitment. This appointment is subject to an enhanced DBS check, social media check and positive references.