Head of English
Cottenham Village College, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB24 8UADeadline is tomorrow
Start date details
April 2025
Closing date
24 November 2024 at 11:59pm
Date listed
17 September 2024
Job details
Job role
- Teacher
Visa sponsorship
- Visas cannot be sponsored
Subject
- English
Working pattern
- Full time
Contract type
- Permanent
Full-time equivalent salary
- £31,957.00 - £50,062.00 Annually (FTE) MPS1-UPS3 plus TLR1a (currently £9,782 p/a)
Head of English job summary
Cottenham Village College is seeking to appoint a new Head of English to join a successful subject team in a friendly village college setting in April 2025.
There is a possibility to start earlier by arrangement.
This is an exciting leadership opportunity to join a welcoming school staff and lead a team of colleagues within the English department to build on strong foundations, driving further improvements and ensuring that all students thrive in the English classroom. You would also be accountable for raising standards of student attainment and achievement.
The successful candidate will have at least 3 years of teaching experience at KS4 and is an excellent classroom practitioner with a track record of strong outcomes. The post would be suitable for someone who wishes to step into a new subject leadership role or for an existing leader looking to utilise their leadership skills in a different school setting.
The English department is driven by the conviction that students are entitled to know and read great works of literature. We are proud to offer our students access to powerful knowledge, and at the heart of this lies our five-year curriculum: knowledge that enables access to complex texts and develops cultural literacy. In the English department subject knowledge is celebrated, and teachers strive to develop it further. Alongside this, curricular thought and a research-informed approach are valued, as we continue to develop a curriculum for our students that challenges them to think and to learn, and establishes high expectations for all. We are supported in this through our Trust-wide subject network where curricular ideas and resources are shared on a regular basis, sharing practice and reducing workload.
We support the enactment of this ambitious, knowledge-rich curriculum through a traditional approach to teaching, behaviour and culture. We believe that schools must teach powerful knowledge, ’the best that has been thought and said’ and an ‘entitlement curriculum’ for all. We utilise explicit instruction and have drawn upon Lemov’s ‘Teach Like A Champion’, Rosenshine and other recent developments in cognitive science. We believe in a culture of scholarship that is warm and strict, disciplined and joyful and where there is ‘purpose not power’. As a school we support teachers by ensuring impeccable behaviour, so that teachers can focus on teaching and pupils can focus on learning.
We are values-driven, and our vision is to provide an inclusive, aspirational and academic education for all our students, so that all of them will learn, thrive and lead successful lives. We are unapologetically ambitious for every child, no matter what their background, prior attainment or needs. We want to ensure that all our students have the option to be able to go to university or aspirational alternative. We are not going to reduce expectations because of a child’s background or home life, or because they are new to English or have a special education need. In fact, the opposite is true. It is our job to redouble our efforts to help children overcome these barriers so that they can flourish.
We value our staff highly and treat workload very seriously. Our systems are high leverage, ensuring you can really focus on your core purpose – teaching, in a sustainable way, unhindered by bureaucracy or poor behaviour.
What we offer:
- A wide range of support and progression opportunities
- A knowledge-rich curriculum built on ‘powerful knowledge’ influenced by the importance of subject-specificity, and by thinking such as Rosenshine and Lemov
- Collaborative planning with centralised, shared units of work and resources
- A feedback policy focused on whole class feedback – no onerous marking policies
- Disruption-free learning
- Highly visible/supportive senior leaders who will support you
- Centralised detentions, including homework detentions
- No formal graded lesson observations – just ongoing ‘no-stakes’ feedback cycles to develop our practice
- Excellent ongoing CPD, career development and promotion opportunities across the Astrea Cambridgeshire region
- Opportunity to complete NPQs
- An unrivalled professional progression model
- A very pleasant village location in beautiful Cambridgeshire
What we are looking for:
The successful candidate will be:
- A highly effective English teacher with detailed knowledge of curriculum and assessment
- Passionate about their subject
- Values-driven, committed and self-motivated
- Flexible, resilient and positive
- Empathetic, positive and self-aware
- Aligned to our values and mission. If you are the type of person who fits with our culture, you will love working here
- Someone who passionately believes that all children can achieve, no matter what their starting point, background or needs. Someone that does not make excuses for what children can achieve
Interested in applying?
If this is something you are interested in, looking for a new challenge, have a passion for education or maybe all of the above, take a look at the Applicant Brief to find out more about the role and how to apply.
We actively welcome visits and would be delighted to show you around CVC to appreciate a working day at the college or for a tour after school hours.
Astrea Academy Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. We expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. All posts are subject to satisfactory background checks including references and enhanced DBS checks.
All queries should be directed via email to recruitment@astreaacademytrust.org
Commitment to safeguarding
Astrea Academy Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and staff. Every child should feel safe and should be protected from any form of child abuse. We have robust policies and procedures that support our commitment to Safeguarding, this includes our Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy. The in-house Safeguarding teams at each Academy work in partnership with families and safeguarding partners to ensure the safety of children is paramount. We are committed to ensuring that all staff access regular, contextual safeguarding training to meet the needs of the local community.
Applying for the job
This school accepts applications through their own website, where you may also find more information about this job.
CVs are not accepted.
About Cottenham Village College
- School type
- Academy, ages 11 to 16
- Education phase
- Secondary
- School size
- 877 pupils enrolled
- Age range
- 11 to 16
- Ofsted report
- View Ofsted report (opens in new tab)
- School website
- Cottenham Village College website (opens in new tab)
Welcome to Cottenham Village College, part of the Astrea Academy Trust, a highly-successful 11-16 mixed academy situated close to the beautiful city of Cambridge; here you will find hard-working, well-behaved students and friendly, dedicated staff who are committed to a fully inclusive, comprehensive education.
The college was established in 1963, one of several village colleges in the region that were the inspiration of educational pioneer Henry Morris, who believed that the school should be at the heart of its community and that education should be a lifelong process. This vision of a school that serves and involves its whole community, that fosters high aspirations and inspires a love of learning is as central to our ethos today as it was when it opened.
Through a highly-ambitious curriculum at CVC, we aim to foster students’ curiosity, unlock their potential and raise their aspirations, as well as ensure that students achieve high levels of attainment that will open doors for their future. A stimulating and broad curriculum also places students in a strong position to question and debate the world around them, making them intellectually resilient and prepares them for citizenship in a democratic society. We believe this is a right of all students and one which is liberating and empowering.
We are equally proud of the wider curricular provision at CVC, both in formal lessons and outside the classroom. Our extensive range of extra-curricular activities, including sports, music, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award programme and residential trips, help to give all students a fully-rounded education and creates opportunity for their personal, as well as their academic, growth.
Cottenham Village College is a friendly, positive and exciting place to work and to learn and we take great pride in the high standards our students consistently achieve. We have very high expectations of all members of the College community and provide an inclusive, friendly and supportive environment in which everyone can thrive and achieve. Students leave as happy, well-qualified and well-motivated individuals who go on to excel in local sixth forms, colleges, universities and the wider world.
I hope you find the information on the school’s website useful. If there is anything you cannot find, please do not hesitate to contact us. If you wish to visit the school to see it for yourself, please contact the school and we would be delighted to show you around.
Zoe Andrews, Principal
School location
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