Early Years Practitioner

Greenleas School, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 2AB

19 days remaining to apply

• Closing date

  1 February 2026 at 10:59pm

• Date listed

  19 December 2025

Job details

• Job role:
  • Other support roles
• Visa sponsorship: Visas cannot be sponsored
• Working pattern: Full time
• Contract type: Permanent
• Full-time equivalent salary: £18,247.00 - £18,521.00 Annually (Actual) Term-time only. Precise salary to be confirmed on appointment.

Early Years Practitioner job summary

This role is term-time only, 31.25 hours per week Monday-Friday and is based at our Derwent Road site in the first instance.

Early Years Practitioner Summary

Joining Greenleas means becoming part of a warm, supportive team where every day brings the chance to inspire young minds and make a lasting difference. With our Early Years provision, excellent facilities and a nurturing ethos, we offer not only a rewarding role but also a happy, collaborative environment where staff are valued and children thrive. If you’re passionate about giving children the very best start to their educational journey, we’d love you to be part of our community.

Early Years Practitioner overview

At Greenleas, we pride ourselves on our friendly, nurturing environment where children aged two to nine are supported to become happy, confident learners. We also offer a welcoming workplace for staff and excellent facilities for our local community.

This term-time only role is based within our Early Years Team at our purpose-built Derwent Road site, supporting children aged two to four. Typically, children progress from our pre-school into our pre-reception class in the year before joining the main school.

We are a warm, collaborative team dedicated to giving every child the very best start to their educational journey.

As an Early Years Practitioner, you will lead engaging activities such as role play, storytelling, and early phonics, while drawing on a range of approaches and resources to support inclusion and inspire curiosity. You will play a key role in helping children explore, learn, and grow in confidence, making each day varied, rewarding, and full of opportunities to make a real difference in the lives of young learners.

We are seeking a consistently outstanding practitioner with a willingness to learn who can demonstrate that they:

• Are an effective and enthusiastic team player who is not afraid of hard work.
• Can model and uphold the vision of the school.
• Can model and uphold the core values of the school and ensure that every child is school-ready, safe, and experiences ‘excellence, enrichment, and enjoyment’.
• Are confident and passionate about early years education and will be a role model for others.
• Have an interest in new developments and initiatives.
• Have a willingness to be flexible and embrace change.
• Have the desire to be an active member of the school team, creating a strong culture of learning which encourages ideas, contributions from others, collaborative working and upholding and seeing through decisions made.

In this role, we can offer you:

• The opportunity to work with passionate staff in a positive, forward-thinking pre-school.
• A welcoming and inclusive community.
• Enthusiastic children and a friendly staff team.
• Support and encouragement for your continuous professional development.
• An engaging, creative, and welcoming environment for learners who take pride in their school.
• Local Government pension scheme.
• Opportunities for progression across our two sites.
• An inclusive, collaborative approach.
• A talented, highly motivated, committed, and professional team of colleagues.
• A supportive and engaged senior leadership team and governing board.

We are an equal opportunities employer and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce. We welcome applications from all individuals regardless of age, disability, gender identity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation. We are particularly keen to hear from applicants who can help us better reflect the diverse ethnic backgrounds of our pupils and wider community.

We operate a safer recruitment policy and follow the CBC Code of Practice. Our recruitment process includes undertaking online searches in line with the requirements of Keeping Children Safe in Education. This post will involve regular contact with children, and therefore is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Applicants are therefore not entitled to withhold information about convictions, cautions or bind-over orders which for any other purposes are “spent” under the provisions of the Act. Any information that is “protected” under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 will not appear on a DBS certificate and does not need to be declared. Guidance on this can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-guidance-on-the-rehabilitation-of-offenders-act-1974

Successful candidates will be subject to a DBS check at the appropriate level. Shortlisted candidates will be asked to complete a self-declaration related to their criminal record or any information that would make them unsuitable to work with children. Additional checks in relation to the Childcare Disqualification Regulations will be undertaken for successful candidates. If you have lived or worked outside of the UK, additional information may be required from you to satisfy safer recruitment checks.

Further information about the job

The candidate will be required to undergo a full enhanced DBS check and must be eligible to work in the UK.

Visas cannot be sponsored.

If you're interested in teaching or training to teach in England as an international citizen, we can help you understand your next steps.

Commitment to safeguarding

Greenleas School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff to share this commitment. We will carry out enhanced DBS checks where necessary on all staff and take references. Please note that online searches are undertaken as part of the safer recruitment process.

Central Bedfordshire Council Schools are equal opportunities employers and welcome applications from all members of the community.

Please advise us if you have a disability, learning difficulties, medical conditions or needs for which you would like us to make reasonable adjustments so that your application and working experience is more accessible.

Applying for the job

This school accepts applications through their own website, where you may also find more information about this job.

CVs will not be accepted for this application.

About Greenleas School

• School type: Local authority maintained school, ages 2 to 9
• Education phase: Primary school
• School size: 680 pupils enrolled
• Age range: 2 to 9
• Ofsted report: View Ofsted report
• School website: Greenleas School website
• See more jobs: teaching-vacancies.service.gov.uk/organisations/greenleas-school

We are a two-site school in the market town of Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. We have over five hundred and sixty main school pupils in addition to those attending our Early Years provision which brings our total number to nearly seven hundred. We have one hundred and thirty staff across both sites.

We have a senior and middle leadership structure, providing opportunities for career development.

Our teachers have shared PPA on a Friday afternoon and come together across both sites for our staff meeting/Inset every Wednesday. We plan as a team across both sites.

School location

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