Assistant Headteacher
Chapel-en-le-Frith High School, High Peak, Derbyshire, SK23 0TQThis job expired on 19 April 2023 – see similar jobs
Job start date
1 September 2023
Closing date
19 April 2023 at 12pm (midday)
Date listed
21 March 2023
Job details
Job role
- Headteacher
- Deputy headteacher
- Assistant headteacher
Visa sponsorship
- Visas cannot be sponsored
Key stage
- Key stage 3, Key stage 4
Working pattern
- Full time: Full time
Contract type
- Permanent
Pay scale
- L12 - L16 (£58,105 - £64,224)
What skills and experience we're looking for
Essential
Qualifications
Qualified teacher status (QTS or QTLS).
Personal qualities
Brilliant people skills. Able to build positive relationships with students, parents and staff quickly.
Ability to inspire and motivate others.
Absolute commitment to inclusive education.
Good organisational skills.
Ability to quickly understand problems and suggest solutions.
High expectations of self and others, good role model for students and staff.
Ability to remain calm in a crisis and make good decisions under pressure.
Ability to communicate effectively to a wide variety of audiences.
Resilience.
Sense of humour and ability to keep things in perspective.
Experience
An excellent classroom teacher with a record of good to outstanding outcomes.
A successful middle leader who has had an impact on standards.
Line managing staff.
School self-evaluation.
Challenging underperformance.
Dealing with parents in a variety of contexts.
Appraisal of staff.
Working with other organisations to form partnerships, eg other schools, universities, maths hubs etc.
Knowledge and skills
A good understanding of current educational landscape, statutory framework and regulatory regime.
An understanding of current best practice in T&L.
A high level of written English, ability to write accurately and concisely.
Desirable
A leadership qualification e.g. NPML, NPSL, SLE or relevant further degree.
Leading significant change in a secondary school with a positive impact on outcomes
Working with students with moderate to severe SEND.
Organising and delivering training.
Safeguarding work.
Using strategies to improve progress of disadvantaged students.
Financial management in schools.
Using school data systems to analyse progress and identify underachievement.
A good knowledge of school MIS systems.
An understanding of using data effectively to support improvements in progress.
Excellent ICT and data analysis skills.
An understanding of ways to benchmark progress against national norms.
A basic understanding of statutory framework for SEND education.
A good understanding of current Ofsted framework and its application in schools.
What the school offers its staff
Excellent CPD
Supportive and effective workplace
Considerable support, both formal and informal
Further information about the job
Commitment to safeguarding
The school uses robust safer recruitment procedures that meet the requirements of KCSiE . These processes are designed to deter and prevent people who are unsuitable to work with children from applying for or securing employment or volunteering opportunities in the school.
Our processes form a vital part of our whole school approach to safeguarding and are an essential part of creating a safe environment for our learners. Further details on the safer recruitment of staff in school can be found in our Child Protection and Safeguarding policy.
Upload additional documents
If you need these documents in an accessible format, please contact the school.
About Chapel-en-le-Frith High School
- School type
- Local authority maintained school, ages 11 to 16
- Education phase
- Secondary
- School size
- 943 pupils enrolled
- Age range
- 11 to 16
- Ofsted report
- View Ofsted report
- School website
- Chapel-en-le-Frith High School website
- Email address
- dhibbert@chapelhigh.org.uk
- Phone number
- 01298813118
An introduction to our school
Our school is an 11-16 mixed, community, comprehensive school of around 950 students. We are lucky to be based in a relatively new building, with great facilities, on a beautiful site at the edge of the Peak District market town of Chapel-en-le-Frith. The Peak District National Park is quite literally on the school’s doorstep and provides endless opportunities for walkers, cyclists, mountain bikers, climbers, cavers and other outdoor enthusiasts.
The nearest big towns to the school are Buxton and Stockport but good transport links mean that the school’s staff travel from a wide area with many commuting from Manchester, Sheffield, Chesterfield and the towns of East Cheshire. A sizeable contingent of staff live in the villages of the Peak District. For anyone considering relocating it is a wonderful area in which to live, with a good mix of housing, decent schools, easy commutes and a good quality of life.
Chapel-en-le-Frith is a rural Peak District market town. The biggest employers in the area are however industrial, mainly manufacturing and quarrying. The school takes students from a wide rural area beyond the town with some students travelling for up to an hour by bus to reach school. There is considerable socio-economic variation across the school’s catchment.
We believe that our school is unusual in several ways; perhaps the most obvious of these is structural. The current school was formed by merging, in a new building, the local area special school with the existing high school. The special school became the current 50 place enhanced resourced SEND provision, always referred to simply as ‘Learning Support’ in school. To meet the moderate to severe special educational needs of its cohort, Learning Support operates as a ‘school within a school’ with a full independent curriculum with significant dedicated SEND trained staffing, including 7 teachers of SEND and a large team of skilled teaching assistants.
Students based in Learning Support study an independent curriculum appropriate to their needs. The curriculum is highly adapted to the social and academic needs of the individual, with a strong focus on independent living, interpersonal and employability skills. The aim is always that a student’s school life should be as ‘normal’ as possible. Almost all students based in Learning Support attend mainstream tutor groups and assemblies. All can integrate at breaks and lunchtimes and share social and eating facilities. Many students attend at least one mainstream subject and some will progress to take several mainstream subjects including GCSEs. These arrangements make for a wonderfully inclusive school with young people who are very accepting of difference.
The school’s inclusive approach spreads more widely too and we often buck local and national trends by being positive about accepting students with difficult and complex backgrounds. We have, for example, an unusually high number of looked after children in school, and we often take students who have been excluded from other schools.
In the school as a whole, raising aspirations is of critical importance, as many students in this isolated rural area are not naturally exposed to the wider opportunities that an urban area might offer. Significant resources are devoted to bridging this gap, we have good links with further education providers and, despite being an 11 to 16 school engage with a number of universities including Oxford and Cambridge. As a result of this work, and despite being in an area with few local post 16 provisions, the school maintains superb progression rates to successful post-16 education. Students in a typical year may transition to over 20 different post-16 institutions.
We think that we are different in other ways too. Our governors value the arts and creative subjects and we retain high uptake in these areas. We aren’t a top-down organisation; we are a team and we work together to do the best we can for the young people in our care. Perhaps most importantly, we recognise that happy, committed staff make for a successful school. We work really hard to look after and develop our staff.
Visitors to our school notice these differences. People frequently comment on the sense of community, the calm atmosphere, and the fact that our staff smile, joke and enjoy what they do. At the start of a recent Ofsted inspection, the lead inspector commented, after meeting the staff in briefing, that he had never met such a welcoming, smiley and relaxed staff team at the start of an inspection. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that we are always fully staffed and are often ‘cold called’ by people wanting to work here.
The school is very popular with parents and has been oversubscribed for year 7 entry for the last thirteen years. Places in the enhanced resource are highly sought after by parents and local authorities and demand for places always exceeds the space available.
Arranging a visit to Chapel-en-le-Frith High School
To arrange a visit and increase the chance of a successful application email dhibbert@chapelhigh.org.uk.
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