Job Description
About the role: Longfield Academy is an incredibly successful secondary academy on the outskirts of Dartford and has a great opportunity for a confident and empathetic Teaching Assistant (EAL) to join their support team from September 2022. Our appointed candidate will join Longfield Academy, receiving fantastic training and development opportunities from the off-set with scope to positively influence our students’ learning.
The role of Teaching Assistant involves working with students across Years 7 to 13 in a variety of subject areas, either on a 1-1 basis or in small groups. Our successful candidate will play a pivotal role in supporting EAL students in lessons and design resources to help them with their learning. Some students may have Special Educational Needs that you can support them with (training is offered in this remit), whilst others may need extra assistance from someone with a passion for the subject to push them even further. The students you will be working with are by no means behind in the subject, but need extra encouragement and support to ensure they understand each topic and to enhance their confidence within the subject.
This is a fixed term opportunity, 30 hours per week, Term Time + 1 week inset. The actual salary is £14,498 based on £20,789 full time equivalent.
Note that whilst the position is offered on a fixed term basis initially of up to one year, every effort will be made to offer a substantive position thereafter, either at Longfield Academy or within the wider family of academies across Leigh Academies Trust. The central Recruitment Team will keep in touch with you throughout your contract to discuss options available to you.
Working with us: Longfield Academy offers a friendly and supportive working environment with innovation and collaboration at the heart of everything we do. The academy is recognised as an International Baccalaureate (IB) world school and delivers the Middle Years Programme (MYP) to students in years 7 -9. Our most recent inspection in 2018 confirmed that Longfield Academy continues to provide strong educational outcomes for students. The richness of our extracurricular activities allows our students to excel in drama, music, sports and STEM. Leaders of the academy are highly ambitious for all of the students. We have a strong drive for school improvement underpinned by a relentless focus on the core business of improving teaching and learning. We do not limit that ambition to the outcomes of public examinations; our students being prepared for life is equally as important to everyone at the academy. Our pastoral system is truly exceptional and we pride ourselves on the quality of care for every student. Our Post-16 provision continues to go from strength to strength, rated in the top 10% for Kent, with our students securing places at top universities.
Longfield Academy benefits from modern, state-of-the-art facilities for learning across all subject areas. We have a thorough and robust approach to school improvement, and the academy is well on course to becoming a truly Outstanding school.
The school is heavily oversubscribed in year 7 and year 12. For more information about our academy, please click here.
Being part of Leigh Academies Trust: As of 1st September 2022, our Trust comprises 30 geographically organised academies (14 secondaries, 14 primaries and 2 special) educating 20,000 students, and employing 3,000 talented staff. The Trust is establishing four ‘clusters’ of academies: North Kent; Central Kent; South East London; Medway. In addition, the Trust is responsible for one of the region’s biggest initial teaching training organisations, a large teaching school hub and is an accredited apprenticeship provider. Our future plans are found in our Vision 2030 document available on our website.
As part of Leigh Academies Trust, you will have ample opportunity to collaborate with your peers both within the academy and across the whole Trust. This is an important part of our vision as we know through experience that we perform better when we work together. You are supported to undertake regular self-development to continue your professional development and hopefully progress further within the organisation.
Our commitment to safeguarding: Leigh Academies Trust and all of our academies are committed to ensuring the highest levels of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our pupils, and we expect all our staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We adopt a fair, robust and consistent recruitment process across all academies and business units which is inline with Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance. This includes online checks for shortlisted candidates - you can read more about this in our Recruitment Guidance. All offers of employment are subject to an Enhanced DBS check, references, and where applicable, a prohibition from teaching check.
Our commitment to equality and diversity: As a Trust, we are passionate about diversity and recognise that as individuals, we all bring something unique to the role regardless of any protected characteristics which is why we treat all of our people equally, without compromise. We are committed to providing equality and fairness throughout our recruitment and employment practices and not discriminating on any grounds.