EXPIRED

Digital Strategy Lead

Ark Schools, London, W12 7TF

This job expired on 26 June 2024 – see similar jobs

• Start date details

  Open to negotiations

• Closing date

  26 June 2024 at 9am

• Date listed

  4 June 2024

Job details

• Job role:
  • Other leadership roles
  • Other support roles
• Visa sponsorship: Visas cannot be sponsored
• Working pattern: Full time: Full time (part time requests will be considered)
• Contract type: Permanent
• Full-time equivalent salary: circa £75,000 (depending on experience)

What skills and experience we're looking for

• Qualified Teacher Status
• Extensive knowledge and experience in using technology to achieve educational aims
• Senior leader in a school/MATor equivalent organisation with teaching experience
• Experience leading projects and delivering digital strategy in an educational setting
• Strong track record of leading and managing change projects in school environments
• IT and Systems literate – able to work closely with IT and data teams
• Experience and expertise using Office 365 and Google suites
• Strong entrepreneurial skills and a track record of being a self-starter
• Flexible, highly organised and able to multi-task and prioritise work to meet deadlines in a dynamic environment
• Strong interpersonal skills and confidence when meeting internal and external stakeholders – ability to persuade, influence and hold others to account
• Excellent at fostering collaboration and working across teams

What the school offers its staff

• 27 days annual leave plus bank holidays, rising with each year of service up to 30 days after 3-years’ service. This entitlement is pro rata for part time employees. This entitlement excludes bank holidays
• Full office closure between Christmas and New Year
• Hybrid working, with currently two days a week in our state-of-the-art office in West London working alongside colleagues
• Regular social events, monthly free breakfast, and daily fruit
• A flexible approach to working with understanding and consideration for work life balance and personal commitments
• As an Ark employee, you will have the opportunity to be part of the TPT (The Pension Trust) scheme, our workplace pension scheme where we make an 11% contribution; you are not required to contribute towards this scheme unless you choose to. Depending on your role you may also be entitled to TPS which is a defined benefit scheme where you contribute a percentage based on how much you earn (as do we) in exchange for a guaranteed amount in your pension pot every year
• Access to high-quality professional learning throughout your career, offering both face-to-face sessions and a bespoke online learning platform
• Access to Ark Rewards scheme offering savings from over 3,000 major retailers, interest-free loans available for season tickets or a bike, gym discounts offering up to 40% off your local gym and free eye tests

Further details about the role

Ark works to make sure that all children, regardless of their background, have access to a great education and real choices in life. Our leadership and governance teams make sure we are doing the right things to deliver these aims for the children and families we serve through our programmes and schools.

We believe that technology can play a key role in making education more effective and efficient. During the period of school lockdowns in 2020, Ark made accelerated progress in its digital strategy, with a focus on 1-1 devices to enable home learning. Nine in ten Ark students from age seven up received a Chromebook and students now have access to a suite of online tools to support home learning. We have been working towards the following objectives:

• Provide more time for learning: Every minute a classroom counts. Technology should enable teachers and pupils to focus on what works
• Develop learner agency: Pupils must feel confident to pursue their own goals. The online world opens opportunities that pupils need to understand and navigate
• Empower and engage parents: Too often parents do not feel like a part of their child’s learning experience. Technology should bring school closer to home
• Support resilience and sustainability: Innovation can remove barriers to opportunity as well as save time, money and be better for the environment. We will use digital tool to enable resilience

We now have the opportunity to think more strategically about how we use digital technologies in education – in parallel with a wider review of Ark Schools’ strategy. This is an exciting opportunity to review and refine our digital strategy to ensure we are taking a PedTech approach and using technology to its full potential to support Ark’s aims and priorities.

About the role

This role will involve leading the review, development, and delivery of our digital strategy to ensure schools are using technology in the most effective way across the network. We are looking for someone who is a qualified teacher with extensive leadership experience in a school. They will have been involved in the design and delivery of a digital strategy in a school or ideally across multiple schools. They should be familiar with the digital tools that schools are using and be confident in communicating how schools can deliver real impact through a comprehensive digital strategy.

The Digital Strategy Lead will report to theDirector of Digital & Technology and will work closely with Ark’s Digital Innovation Lead (who is focused on emerging technologies, including AI) and Ark’s Strategy, IT, Education and Curriculum Teams. The Digital Strategy Lead will line manage Ark’s Digital Implementation Manager.

Key Responsibilities:

• Consult with experts in the field, and Ark’s stakeholders, to review and develop Ark’s Digital Strategy
• Ensure 1-1 devices are used to their full potential and drive engagement by identifying how technology can best serve our priorities and educational goals
• Work closely with our Subject Network Leads and education teams to ensure we take a PedTech approach to the use of digital in schools
• Own the digital section of Ark’s Education Model, which sets out foundational expectations and opportunities to develop practice in digital learning
• Ensure Ark’s ecosystem of apps is fit for purpose and that tools are used effectively through training and sharing best practice
• Work with our Data Team to ensure schools have access to the right data and insight to measure the effectiveness of the strategy in their school, as well as defining best practice approaches to using data to help deliver the digital strategy more effectively
• Develop our digital training offer to ensure we raise awareness of and leverage digital opportunities across the whole network.
• Engage schools, staff, parents, and pupils with the strategy, by signposting to or producing resources for schools or interacting directly with school communities
• Ensure the progress of digital strategy, towards its aims, are reported through owning and overseeing a digital data dashboard and preparing and providing updates to the management team and regional directors
• Work with the IT team to ensure all students have access to our digital offering (e.g., by managing the deployment of Chromebooks), through data collection and analysis (tracking the progress of the digital strategy), monitoring of digital use, and digital support (both remote and in school)
• Work with the Computing subject community to ensure that core elements of the national curriculum, and wider digital literacy required to support the Digital Strategy, can be delivered

Commitment to safeguarding

Ark is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. In order to meet this responsibility, we follow a rigorous selection process to discourage and screen out unsuitable applicants.

All employees must undertake an enhanced DBS check. You are required, before appointment, to disclose any unspent conviction, cautions, reprimands or warnings under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975. Non-disclosure may lead to termination of employment. However, disclosure of a criminal background will not necessarily debar you from employment - this will depend upon the nature of the offence(s) and when they occurred.

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Digital Strategy Lead JD June 2024.pdf - 153 KB (opens in new tab)

About Ark Schools

• Type: Multi-academy trust
• Website: Ark Schools website
• Email address: recruitment@arkonline.org
• See more jobs: teaching-vacancies.service.gov.uk/organisations/ark-schools

We’re an international charity, transforming lives through education. We exist to give every young person, regardless of their background, a great education and real choices in life. In the UK, we’re a network of 39 schools, educating around 28,500 pupils in areas where we can make the biggest difference and we’re recognised as one of the highest achieving academy groups in the country. We want to change the lives of children everywhere, not just in our own schools. So, we create and incubate Ventures designed not only to help pupils in Ark schools, but also to improve education systems.

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