Literacy and Language Lead

The Winsford Academy, Winsford, Cheshire, CW7 2BT

18 days remaining to apply

• Start date details

  TBC

• Closing date

  9 January 2026 at 12pm (midday)

• Date listed

  22 December 2025

Job details

• Job role:
  • Other leadership roles
• Visa sponsorship: Visas cannot be sponsored
• Working pattern: Full time
• Contract type: Permanent
• Full-time equivalent salary: £51,772 - £55,746

Literacy and Language Lead job summary

The Role

We are seeking an ambitious and passionate Foundational Literacy and English Strand Lead to join our team and drive rapid improvement in literacy and English across our 11–16 secondary school. We are looking for an inspiring Lead to help transform outcomes for our students and drive rapid improvement in reading, writing, and communication skills. This is a unique opportunity to lead change in a school on an exciting improvement journey, shaping strategy and empowering colleagues to deliver exceptional literacy provision. If you are passionate about closing gaps, raising aspirations, and ensuring every child can access the curriculum confidently, we want you on our team. This is a pivotal leadership role within our school improvement journey, offering the opportunity to shape strategy, lead high-quality teaching, and make a measurable impact on student outcomes. If you are an experienced English specialist with a proven track record of raising attainment and inspiring colleagues, we would love to hear from you.

Our School Values

Winsford Academy is a fully inclusive school so the ideal candidate will be passionate about social mobility and have a determination for all students to achieve their potential.  

Why work for the Halliard Trust

Who we are

We educate over 5,000 children and employ 900 teaching and support staff to deliver our vision to ensure every student leaves school with the values, skills, qualities and aptitudes to thrive in society combined with highest possible learning outcomes. Our core values of Respect, Integrity and Optimism underpin everything we do.

Formerly named The Fallibroome Trust, we have engaged with all of our stakeholders to choose a new name and are now called the Halliard Trust and are a school-led multi-academy trust which encourages its schools to work with a high level of autonomy and keep their own ‘personality’ and close ties to their local communities – always underpinned by strong support from the Trust leadership and the school improvement and business teams. We offer a wide-ranging programme of professional development for all employees to support those taking their first steps in education to those working as exceptional leaders.

The people you work with will support and motivate you in achieving your ambitions. Our exceptional teachers, support staff and leaders come from a wide range of backgrounds, but they all share a deeply held commitment to give our students an outstanding education in an inspiring and happy school environment. The Trust has grown organically to three secondary and eight primary schools based in Cheshire. The Trust operates from its head office in Macclesfield, Cheshire where the School Improvement and Business Support teams are based.

Working with the Trust

Everyone who works with us is crucial to the Trust’s success and professional learning plays a vital role in how we work. Successful teams are full of people who not only care but feel cared for and valued and subsequently take care in all they do. encourage and support every individual to develop themselves to achieve their full potential.

Benefits of working with the Trust

• High quality professional learning & development at all stages of your career
• Access to the Teachers’ Pension
• Free onsite parking at all sites
• Cycle to work scheme
• Confidential employee counselling helpline

How to Apply

We ask all applicants to apply through SAMpeople Recruit/Face-Ed; our recruitment software. This enables us to efficiently carry out our safer recruitment checks, but we recognise it can take some time for the applicant. The good news is, you will only need to register for Face-Ed once to apply for any role in the Halliard Trust's 11 schools.

We ask all applicants to apply through SAMpeople Recruit/Face-Ed; our recruitment software. This enables us to efficiently carry out our safer recruitment checks, but we recognise it can take some time for the applicant. The good news is, you will only need to register for Face-Ed once to apply for any role in the Halliard Trust's 11 schools.

Our tips for a painless process are as follows:

Because SAMpeople Recruit is cloud based software, it is possible for you to experience a break in connection and you won't necessarily know about it straight away. We therefore strongly recommend that you prepare your main application content in a different package like MS Word/Notepad and copy and paste it into your application form in the relevant sections.

If you get a message saying "Validation Error" it isn't a software fault. It means you have entered data in a format that wasn't expected and it is causing a problem with saving. This might mean you have entered words in a box that expects numbers, for example.

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

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

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 The Winsford Academy

• School type: Academy, ages 11 to 16
• Education phase: Secondary school
• School size: 1023 pupils enrolled
• Age range: 11 to 16
• Ofsted report: View Ofsted report
• School website: The Winsford Academy website
• See more jobs: teaching-vacancies.service.gov.uk/organisations/the-winsford-academy

The Academy was one of the founding members of the Fallibroome Trust, a highly regarded and outstanding Multi Academy Trust, based in Cheshire, providing opportunities for development and collaboration across the Trust as well as within the school itself.

Our Academy is an 11-16 mixed comprehensive school, and we currently have 1060 students. Our intake is non-selective and varied. We pride ourselves in our inclusive approach, but we never compromise on high expectations.

School location

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