Director of People & Culture
Generations Multi Academy Trust, Waltham Cross, EN7 5QW4 days remaining to apply
Start date details
April 2025
Closing date
19 December 2024 at 9am
Date listed
5 December 2024
Job details
Job role
- Other leadership roles
- Other support roles
Visa sponsorship
- Skilled Worker visas can be sponsored
Working pattern
- Full time
Contract type
- Permanent
Full-time equivalent salary
- £80,000 - £90,000
What skills and experience we're looking for
Purpose of the role:
The Director of People & Culture is an authentic and principled people leader, with strategic and operational responsibility for all aspects of the Trust’s HR service, which underpins the Trust’s people culture. The Director of People & Culture is responsible for and leads on:
- Development of the Trust’s people strategy, its associated goals, plans and budget to ensure that its people are aligned to achieve the Trust's goals
- Provision of end-to-end HR services to an employee group of around 400 staff across multiple locations, with the aim of providing an excellent employee experience
- Leadership, management and coaching of the HR team
- Ensuring the Trust’s compliance with UK employment-related legislation and best practice principles within the sector
- Operate, advise and support at senior level within the Trust's Leadership structure. Attend Executive Leadership Team (ELT), Senior Leadership Team (SLT), People Committee (PC) and Trust Board meetings, as required
- Work with the Trustees, CEO and other senior leaders to devise and deliver on a people strategy to support the Trust’s growth and aim to provide an excellent employee experience. This should include initiatives to support inclusion and
Key responsibilities: 1. Strategic Oversight
diversity, talent acquisition, performance management, talent development, employee engagement and wellbeing
- Develop purposeful operational plans for a variety of HR areas including resourcing, compensation and benefits, succession planning – to include policies, programmes, processes, systems and collaboration with external providers to meet success criteria
- Oversee the implementation of the people strategy and all related HR initiatives and projects
- Successfully communicate the Trust’s people strategy to the wider senior leadership and HR teams and employees
- Ensure the Trust’s compliance with UK people-related legislation, other statutory requirements and best practice from industry
- Successfully manage the integration of new schools into the Trust, from a people and employment law perspective
- Serve as a trusted advisor to the CEO and other senior leaders on matters including workforce planning, recruitment, coaching / development, people management, culture and change management, compensation & benefits and performance
- Establish, measure and report on the performance of the HR function against a range of key metrics
- Lead on the provision of advice and take part in disciplinaries, grievances and other employee relations matters concerning senior members of staff or where these are complex in nature. Coach other members of the HR team to provide advice and support on other ER matters
- Act as the Trust’s main point of contact with external parties during conciliation or litigation related to employment matters
- Effectively partner with other internal teams and external service providers to run seamless and error-free core HR processes eg. payroll, benefits, systems, onboarding / offboarding, employee communications and culture / team-building initiatives
- Ensure that the Trust has the requisite HR policies, procedures, processes and systems in place to meet legal and statutory requirements, as well as improve efficiency
- Act as an ambassador and champion for employee wellbeing and engagement including developing policies, approaches and interventions that go beyond best practice
- Manage and lead all direct reports in the HR team, including where appropriate:
2. Leadership and Management
- resource planning and recruitment
- ensuring that their performance effectively delivers the Trust’s aim to deliver first class HR provision to its employees
- agreeing targets and objectives and regularly monitoring their performance against these through the appraisal process
- regular communication through informal and formal channels such as team and one to one meetings
- leading and promoting improvement, change and strategic projects
- coaching, mentoring and training/developing staff
3. Operational
- Provide cover across all HR functions in the absence of other staff
Note
The duties and responsibilities listed above are indicative of the tasks the Director of People & Culture will perform and are not intended to be an exhaustive list. The post holder will be expected to take on additional responsibilities appropriate to the role as required by the needs of the Trust and in consultation with the CEO as they arise.
What the school offers its staff
Welcome to our information pack about the Generations Multi Academy Trust. GMAT is a cross-phase Multi Academy Trust based in Cheshunt, currently comprising two secondaries and one primary - Goffs, Goffs-Churchgate and Flamstead End School. It is our hope that a further primary, Andrews Lane School, will join our partnership from November 2024. Across the piece, GMAT currently has just under 3,000 students in its care and employs just under 400 staff. From Spring 2023, the MAT opened nursery provision on the Goffs-Churchgate site, with subsidised and term-time only places for staff. The nursery is run by Ashbourne Nurseries - https://ashbournedaynurseries.com/
The MAT is extremely clear about its daily purpose, reflected in its motto of “No Set Destiny for Any Child.” All of our schools, leaders and staff fiercely believe in the life-changing nature of education and work tirelessly to that end, day in and day out. There is no set destiny for any of the children in our care; rather, our daily work across the piece allows children to forge new futures and destinies.
Flamstead End School is a thriving primary school in Cheshunt with approximately 485 children on roll. It has a Preschool, 60-place nursery offering 30 hours provision and two classes per year group from Reception to Year 6. Flamstead End is a 'Therapeutic Thinking' school and seeks to understand and support children's behaviour so that they are able to learn and achieve to the best of their ability. The school is a tight knit community, with a well-established staff who care for one another and the children in their charge.
Goffs-Churchgate is a fully mixed comprehensive school for 11-16 year olds, with just over 600 students on roll. The school has rightly established a very strong reputation for both its academic outcomes and its close-knit, nurturing community, receiving over 600 applications for 120 places for 2024 admission. The decision to cap student numbers at 600 is entirely deliberate, enabling us to maintain a strong sense of community where everybody knows everybody else.
Goffs is a mixed 11-18 comprehensive Academy with approximately 1,600 students on roll, including a thriving and successful Sixth Form. The school is also extremely popular in the local area, with an average of over 800 applications annually for the 240 places available, and significant waiting lists for places across the year groups.
All of our schools enjoy extremely high levels of applications and are over-subscribed. The schools are within close proximity of each other and share many activities, including CPD for staff. One of the Trust’s fundamental principles is that no one school is in any way more important or successful than the other. As such, CPD and other events are rotated through schools in the Trust, with everyone learning from and sharing with each other. This collegiate and collaborative approach permeates our Trust.
Staff and students work in modern, professional environments, with all schools benefitting from recent building projects including a full, £20million rebuild at Goffs. The facilities provide light, modern, professional and a fit for purpose working environment for all.
Notwithstanding a highly challenging funding situation for schools generally, the MAT remains financially secure. Finances are overseen by a Chief Finance Officer with considerable financial expertise in the private sector. The Trust deliberately created an Income Generation function, and extensive lettings and business development work now takes place across all sites in the MAT. This additional income – now yielding in excess of £500k per annum – underpins generous levels of staffing at our schools, plus many “extras” that would otherwise be unaffordable in the current funding climate.
Our schools pride themselves on their sense of community – both within the school itself, and in the wider locality. Visitors to our schools unfailingly comment on a very real sense of community, coupled with warmth and pride. Our schools are members of Cheshunt Extended Services (ChExS), offering a variety of extended school and community-based activities for both students and parents. Our students actively support local charity work such as the Isabel Hospice and maintain strong links with our local primary schools.
Our schools are proud to be truly community-based schools, with students and staff from different religions and a number of languages spoken in each school. As a Trust we recognise and celebrate what makes us unique and different, and acknowledge that we are also part of one community. Our aim is for everybody to feel valued and respected and we strive hard to ensure we create a positive culture within the schools to enable this to happen.
We are looking forward to further widening our Trust and to working in partnership with both primary schools and further secondaries. Further information about GMAT can be found here: https://generationsmat.com/
Outcomes
Goffs Academy
Exam results in 2024 reflect another year of huge success for Goffs. The results reflect a 3 year upward trend and an impressive improvement on the excellent outcomes achieved across the headline measures last year.
GCSE highlights include:
- Extremely strong progress scores across the headline measures with results considerably above the national average (Estimated progress 8 score: 0.24)
- Particularly impressive outcomes in English and Maths; both subjects achieved a progress score significantly above the national average. English Language performed particularly strongly at grade 4+ and grade 5+ exceeding the national average of students achieving these grades by 20%. Maths performed particularly strongly at the top end with 28% of students achieving grade 7+. This is very comfortably above the national average of 17%.
- 72% of students achieved grade 4 or above in English and Maths (6% above the national average).
- 52% of students achieved grade 5 or above in English and Maths (6% above the national average).
- 21% of the GCSE grades were at grade 7 or above.
- The percentage of students entering the full Ebacc was 64% which is significantly above the national average of 39%, and the Hertfordshire average of 47%.
At A-Level, continuing the upward trend of recent years, students achieved another excellent set of exam results, including an overall 100% pass rate. 64% of Year 13 students secured a university or college place to start in autumn 2024. The wide range of university or further education courses onto which students have progressed include Law, History, Geography, Maths, Finance, Physics and Biomedical Science, other students have gained places on fiercely competitive apprenticeships in areas such as Civil Engineering and within the NHS. Our Sixth Form has an excellent reputation in the local area, over the past three years the numbers of students applying to join our Sixth Form has continued to increase, such that we now have approximately 400 Sixth Formers within our school community.
Goffs-Churchgate Academy
Exam results in 2024 have once again produced an overall estimated progress score significantly above the national average and reflect the continued success the school has achieved since joining the Trust in 2017.
Highlights include:
- Exceptionally strong progress scores across the headline measures, with the overall progress 8 score significantly above the national average for a third year in a row. (Estimated progress 8 score: 0.38).
- Excellent outcomes were achieved in Maths and the performance in English was phenomenally strong (Estimated Maths progress score: 0.33. Estimated English progress score: 0.63).
- The outcomes at the top end were particularly impressive with the progress score for the students with high prior attainment very significantly above the national average.
- There was a 12% increase in the percentage of students entering the full Ebacc to bring the overall entry figure to 67% which is significantly above the national average of 39%, and the Hertfordshire average of 47%.
Flamstead End School
Extremely strong outcomes were achieved across the school in 2024. The improvements in this year’s outcomes are reflective of the rapid whole school improvement that has taken place in Flamstead End School since joining the Trust in January 2023.
Highlights include:
- The percentage of students achieving Good Level of Development in Early Years, at 72% remains above the national average of 68%.
- Very strong Phonics outcomes in Year 1 with a 90% pass rate. This is 9% above the national average and reflects an 8% increase from last year.
- Outcomes in the Multiplications Tables Check were particularly strong at the top end with 50% of the cohort achieving 24 or 25 marks.
- Key Stage 2 SATs results across the board are extremely strong and comfortably above both the national and Hertfordshire averages: There was particularly impressive performance in Key Stage 2 Writing with 80% achieving the expected standard (National average: 72%), and 32% achieving greater depth, which is considerably above the national average of 13%.
- Key Stage 2 Maths outcomes at the higher standard were excellent with 40% of the cohort achieved the higher standard, which is 26% above the national average.
Staff Development
The Trust has an extremely strong reputation for staff development, for both teaching and support staff. Developing the next generation of school leaders, both middle and senior, plus future Headteachers for those who wish to pursue this, is a responsibility that we take very seriously. We have a full suite of staff leadership development which staff can join be they an ECT or highly experienced colleague.
In addition to whole staff training days, we disaggregate a number of hours for training every year. This allows staff development to be highly personalised as staff can opt for the training which best meets their needs, including the opportunity to do a research project in partnership with Cambridge University. Many use their disaggregated time to coach others or to receive coaching. Moreover, there are specific training sessions for ECTs and other interested staff which run each week after school.
We also place a lot of emphasis on ‘on the job’ training and support. A thorough induction scheme is available to all new staff, and mentors/buddies are assigned to guide you through those new routines. Finally, external courses can of course be booked if, on very rare occasions, we cannot cater for a particular training need in house.
Leadership Development
The Trust’s Leadership Academy encompasses both staff and student leadership development through a series of student led groups and staff leadership pathways. The staff programme specifically provides opportunities for:
- Aspiring Middle Leaders
- Aspiring Senior Leaders
All pathways are personalised for the individual and staff receive one to one support from a mentor alongside working on a whole school project. Both support staff and teaching staff are welcome to join the Leadership Academy at any point in their career.
A full suite of leadership training is offered with a range of sessions including:
- Communicating vision and values
- Developing your leadership approach
- Building a high performing team
- Supporting your team
- Leading your team day to day
- Quality assuring effective teaching
- Observation for improvement
- Using data for impact
- Fostering positive behaviour for learning
- Leading and managing innovation and change
Attendance to all training sessions leads to certification by the SSAT. In addition, we encourage aspirant Senior Leaders to take part in the SSAT ‘Stepping Up to Senior Leadership’ training programme, which includes four external sessions throughout the year. As part of the Trust’s commitment to developing future leaders, a number of the existing Senior Leadership Team across both secondary schools gained experience through an ‘Associate’ SLT position before gaining substantive leadership posts.
Trust Staff Benefits
Alongside our very strong focus on outstanding professional development and promotion opportunities, we also offer a range of benefits including:
Competitive base salary with a tailor-made development plan aimed at enhancing your future [earnings] potential through:
- High quality, personalised CPD;
- Bespoke leadership development programmes;
- Subsidies for Masters and Degree courses;
- Secondment and shadowing opportunities;
- As part of our Multi Academy Trust, “Generations”, potential to work across more than one school to develop career enhancing skills and knowledge.
- Supported Nursery provision with Ashbourne at any of their nurseries in the Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, and Bedfordshire area:
- 15% discount for all Trust staff
- Term time only places are available.
- A school day would be 9.00am – 3.00pm
- “Sundries” would be applied to a child taking up a funded only space (e.g. 30 hours funding only). This covers the cost of: meals, snacks, nursery resources
- All staff have access to a wide range of health and wellbeing resources which includes an Employee Assistance Programme via Spectrum.Life who offer a wide range of health and wellbeing resources, plus access to counselling for staff and their immediate family. The EAP service is accessible 24/7, 365 days a year and is a completely free and confidential service;
- The MAT adheres to the STPCD for its teaching staff;
- Cycle to work scheme;
- Onsite car valeting at a reduced price for Trust staff;
- Substantially discounted membership to Lifestyle Fitness’s state of the art purpose built gym, at Goffs Academy.
Additional financial incentives and tax efficient benefits, including:
- Exam marker payment of £400 plus 2 days paid leave to do the marking (1styear);
- Payments for staff taking weekend sporting fixtures: staff paid £200 for leading a minimum of six Saturday fixtures plus 6 weekly training sessions;
- A daily allowance of £50 for school trips taken over a weekend or any school holiday;
- A £1,000 Employee Referral Scheme (i.e. finder’s fee) for anyqualifying positionsthat you refer the successful candidate for: £500 on the person starting, and £500 if the person is still at the school 12 months later.
Access to a wide range of health and well-being resources including:
- New, professional, and fit for purpose working environments;
- Free use of a range of sports and leisure facilities including a fully equipped gym and swimming pool;
- Occupational Health & counselling support;
- Free flu jabs;
- Subsidised social events;
- Free tea, coffee, and milk for staff.
Commitment to safeguarding
Our organisation is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. We expect all staff, volunteers and trustees to share this commitment.
Our recruitment process follows the keeping children safe in education guidance.
Offers of employment may be subject to the following checks (where relevant):
childcare disqualification
Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)
medical
online and social media
prohibition from teaching
right to work
satisfactory references
suitability to work with children
You must tell us about any unspent conviction, cautions, reprimands or warnings under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975.
Applying for the job
Please download the application form using the link below, and once completed send to recruitment@generationsmat.herts.sch.uk
CVs are not accepted.
Upload additional documents
If you need these documents in an accessible format, please contact the school.
About Generations Multi Academy Trust
- Type
- Multi-academy trust
- Email address
- recruitment@generationsmat.herts.sch.uk
- Phone number
- 01992624375
Head office location
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