What skills and experience we're looking for
I am delighted to present our latest conceptual school improvement project, which aims to help more vulnerable learners access education and transform their lives.
YES Connected is envisaged to help support our schools with their learners who have struggled or are struggling to access school. The successful candidate will design the new online platform to allow learners direct access to live lessons and wider learning opportunities catering for short-term engagement pieces through to long-term curriculum delivery as part of a needed individual education plan.
This role presents a unique opportunity to take conceptual ideas and bring them to life; we are looking for a proven leader with tenacity to create YES Connected. Working directly with the central team, the successful individual will work with our academy headteachers to create something truly extraordinary, complementary and vital in the lives of all learners it engages with.
YES Connected has the potential to not only meet the initial gap we have within our schools for those medically unfit or unable to attend (EBSNA) through a blend of live learning, pre-recorded materials and set work tasks (Stage 1), but will also develop to 25 hours of live teaching (Stage 2) and work on developments to widen the provision, allowing for Local Authorities to work with us, with their identified learners (Stage 3). We also have plans around adult education that could allow us to meet the needs of the extensive cohort in need at post-16 and after (Stage 4).
Though starting off small to prove the concept and deliver high quality, this project has the potential to be so much to so many and will only be limited by our imagination.
This introduction is by no means a finished article. It serves as a preface to present the prospects of this exciting project. The successful candidate will have the autonomy to drive this to all we see it can be.
Nic Brindle, CEO
Key Priorities
• Create an online learning platform and lead its running to support the trusts schools with their learners.
• Support strategic leadership and management of schools understanding the needs and wants of each academy and linking this into the online school offer
• Support with securing and sustaining effective teaching and learning throughout the school
• Undertake Performance Management and Line Management responsibilities for staff who work through ‘YES Connected’ where applicable
• Deploy staff and resources efficiently and effectively to meet specific objectives in line with the programmed strategic plans.
• Ensure effective assessments, pastoral care and behaviour support through the interventions and teaching interlinking with schools’ expectations
• To be responsible for the day to day leadership and management of YES Connected
Teaching and Learning
The virtual school lead will help secure and sustain effective teaching and learning throughout the provision, monitor and evaluate the quality of teaching and standards of students’ achievement, using benchmarks to track and set targets for improvements. They will:
• Contribute to the teaching throughout the provision as and when required.
• Create a suitable online learning environment and maintain high levels of positive behaviour and promotion of effective attitudes of learning, which promotes and secures good teaching, effective learning, and high standards of achievement.
• Create and help organise the curriculum and its assessment; work with the trusts Headteachers to monitor and evaluate it in order to identify areas for improvement.
• Ensure that the curriculum and assessments meet National Curriculum requirements (where needed).
• Ensure that improvements in literacy, numeracy are priority targets for all students.
Leading and Managing Staff
The virtual school lead will motivate, support, challenge and develop staff to help secure improvement. They will:
• Maximise the contribution of staff to improving the quality of education provided and the standards achieved and ensure that constructive working relationships are formed between staff and students at the academy.
• Ensure that equal opportunities and inclusion policies are reflected in practice.
• Work with the trust Headteachers to implement and sustain effective systems for the management of staff performance, incorporating appraisal, threshold, and targets for teachers, including targets relating to professional practice and students’ progress and achievement
• Specifically motivate and enable all staff working on / for the program to carry out their respective roles to the highest standard, through high quality continuing professional development based on assessment of needs
• Lead, support, and co-ordinate the provision of high-quality professional development
• Sustain your own motivation and that of other staff
• Ensure that professional duties are fulfilled, as specified in the Terms and Conditions of Service under the YES Trust
Partnership Working
• Play a pivotal role in establishing a culture and curriculum which fulfils the aims and requirements of the wider community as set out in the vision.
• Seek opportunities to work with parents and carers, community figures, businesses and other organisations to enrich student experience and to promote the trusts values to the wider community.
• Collaborate with trust schools, local schools, the local authority and other agencies to promote the academic spiritual, moral, social, emotional and cultural well-being of students and their families.
• Represent YES connected at relevant meetings, as and when required.
Health and Safety / Child Protection
• To help ensure that health and safety standards meet statutory requirements, monitoring health and safety matters as and when needed / required, particularly ensuring that members of the staff take reasonable care for the health and safety of themselves and others.
• To help ensure that child protection and safeguarding procedures and Department of Health assessments of children in need are rigorously complied with, and that the welfare and health and safety of students are of prime consideration.
• To promote the safety and well-being of students and staff.
• To help ensure adherence to trust and school level policies
and procedures to achieve safe working practices and prioritise the safeguarding of all students and staff.
What the school offers its staff
Our Trust
Together, we have developed a growing family of schools which makes a difference for children and young people. As we continue to set and raise the bar in all the work we undertake, we are keen to maintain our national recognition as one of the highest achieving alternative provision and SEN multi-academy trusts in the country.
Our ability to make that difference rests on our vision and our core values which include an absolute belief in the importance of collaboration and mutual support, and on our recognition of the trust as a family of schools in which colleagues are equally valued. We unashamedly use words like “kindness” and “compassion” in our values.
We want to continue this further, and to become the employer of choice for teaching and support staff across the region.
Benefits
• Lessons will be delivered flexibly around school timetables
• Fantastic classroom support
• Access to training and CPD including further professional qualifications.
• Specialist training where required
• Cycle to work scheme
• Flexible and supportive approach to work
• Free parking (including charging stations on most sites)
• Nursery benefits
• Education Mutual – private health support - access to a 24/7 GP, free face to face counselling, physiotherapy, nurse help-line, prescription service whenever you need it
• Perkbox - vouchers, discounts and wellbeing
Commitment to safeguarding
The safe recruitment of staff in the Trust is the first step in the effective safeguarding and promotion of welfare for our children. The Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff, volunteers and other workers in the Trust to share this commitment. It is recognised that this can only be achieved through sound procedures, good inter-agency co-operation and the recruitment and retention of competent, motivated employees who are suited to, and fulfilled in the roles they undertake. A copy of the Trust’s Safer Recruitment Policy is available on request.