Deputy Headteacher
Chapel-en-le-Frith High School, High Peak, Derbyshire, SK23 0TQDeadline is tomorrow
Job start date
1 September 2025
Closing date
25 April 2025 at 12pm (midday)
Date listed
25 March 2025
Job details
Job role
- Deputy headteacher
Visa sponsorship
- Visas cannot be sponsored
Key stage
- Key stage 3, Key stage 4
Working pattern
- Full time
Contract type
- Permanent
Pay scale
- L18 to L22
What skills and experience we're looking for
ESSENTIAL
Qualifications
Qualified teacher status
Personal qualities
An absolute commitment to the school’s values.
Brilliant people skills. Able to build positive relationships with students, parents and staff quickly.
An ability to inspire and to motivate others.
Good organisational skills.
An ability to quickly understand problems and suggest solutions.
High expectations of self and others, a good role model for students and staff.
The ability to remain calm in a crisis and to make good decisions under pressure.
The ability to communicate effectively to a wide variety of audiences.
Resilience.
A sense of humour and an ability to keep things in perspective.
Experience
An excellent classroom teacher with a record of good to outstanding outcomes.
Significant experience as a member of a senior leadership team in a school.
Line managing staff.
School self-evaluation.
Challenging underperformance.
Dealing with parents in a variety of contexts.
Appraisal of staff.
Using school data systems to analyse progress and identify underachievement.
Delivering training.
Leading significant change in a secondary school that has had a positive impact on outcomes.
Supporting student well-being.
Knowledge and skills
A good understanding of the current educational landscape, its statutory framework and regulatory regime.
An understanding of current best practice in teaching and learning.
Excellent ICT and data analysis skills.
An understanding of ways to benchmark progress against national norms.
A good knowledge of school MIS systems.
An understanding of how to use data effectively to support improvements in progress.
A high level of written English, the ability to write accurately and concisely.
DESIRABLE
A leadership qualification e.g. NPQSL, NPQH or a relevant further degree.
Working with students with moderate to severe SEND.
Safeguarding work.
GCSE examination administration and JCQ regulations as they apply to examinations.
Successfully using strategies to improve the progress of disadvantaged students.
Financial management in schools.
Working with governors
An understanding of the statutory framework around SEND education.
What the school offers its staff
Excellent CPD
Supportive and effective workplace
Considerable support, both formal and informal
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.
Applying for the job
Please download the application form using the link below, and once completed send to recruitment@chapelhigh.org.uk
CVs are not accepted.
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
- 951 pupils enrolled
- Age range
- 11 to 16
- Ofsted report
- View Ofsted report
- School website
- Chapel-en-le-Frith High School website
- Email address
- recruitment@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 recruitment@chapelhigh.org.uk.
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