Principal
The Featherstone Academy, Pontefract, West Yorkshire, WF7 5AJ18 days remaining to apply
Job start date
13 April 2026
Closing date
12 November 2025 at 9am
Date listed
23 October 2025
Job details
Job role
- Headteacher
Visa sponsorship
- Visas cannot be sponsored
Key stage
- Key stage 3, Key stage 4
Working pattern
- Full time
Contract type
- Permanent
Full-time equivalent salary
- Leadership L25-29 (Negotiable for the right candidate)
Principal job summary
Principal - The Featherstone Academy, Pontefract Road, Featherstone, WF7 5AJ
Grade: Leadership L25-29 (Negotiable for the right candidate)
Start Date: April 2026
Due to the forthcoming retirement of our current Principal, an exciting opportunity has arisen to apply for this pivotal role within our Trust. As a Principal working as part of Resilience Multi Academy Trust, you will be part of our Trust Executive Team and will work in a collaborative way with your colleagues, offering support and bringing your experience and ideas - genuinely working together to improve our schools. As a trust, we work in a progressive, autonomous and agile way to drive continually improving standards. We believe this is a genuinely unique offer for a Principal and provides incredible opportunities for your own leadership and development.
If you are looking for a leadership role, collaborating with a successful team that puts young people first, we are confident that this is an opportunity you have been waiting for.
As Principal at The Featherstone Academy you will hold and articulate clear personal values and moral purpose, focused on providing the best possible education for the students you serve. You will embody the Nolan Principles and lead by example – with integrity, creativity, resilience, and clarity - drawing on your scholarship, expertise and skills, and that of those around you.
You will be enthusiastic and inspiring and provide energy to drive the Featherstone Academy in pursuit of excellence and equity with a relentless focus on improving teaching and learning.
You will ensure the financial strength of The Featherstone Academy is enhanced, allowing RMAT to achieve its strategic aims and objectives by championing its people moving forward the employer of choice agenda against the national difficulties in recruitment and retention.
To be successful in this post, you will need to demonstrate an ability to provide strategic leadership recognising a background of such in a school or trust. You will need to evidence your personal impact and credibility.
You will demonstrate confident personal behaviour and be comfortable in establishing internal and external relationships at pace with all stakeholders and with our local and regional partners. Your leadership credibility will allow you to hit the ground running with experienced education professionals. This is a fantastic opportunity to build your profile in a nationally known trust. You will have the opportunity to positively influence the lives of thousands of young people and their families.
To discuss this role in more depth, please contact the HR Team in the first instance to facilitate your discussion. Please email recruitment@rmat.uk
Further information can also be found at Principal - The Featherstone Academy - Teaching Vacancies - GOV.UK
You should ensure that you provide a supporting statement which outlines your experience in relation to the job description and person specification.
Closing date for applications: Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 9.00 a.m.
Interviews: Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26 November 2025
Please note dates are indicative and subject to change.
Resilience Multi Academy Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. We expect all colleagues, volunteers, visitors and contractors to share this commitment. Shortlisted applicants will undergo relevant checks in line with statutory guidance and all appointees will be required to undertake an Enhanced Disclosure check by the Disclosure and Barring Service.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Further information about the job
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.
View advert on external website (opens in new tab)About The Featherstone Academy
- School type
- Academy, ages 11 to 16
- Education phase
- Secondary
- School size
- 524 pupils enrolled
- Age range
- 11 to 16
- Ofsted report
- View Ofsted report
- School website
- The Featherstone Academy website
The Featherstone Academy is committed to the traditional values of discipline, good behaviour and respect. We believe these to be sacrosanct. These values have created a learning environment in which all students can succeed. This environment is supported by an imaginative and differentiated curriculum in all year groups.
The staff of The Featherstone Academy are committed to ensuring the students who attend the academy are successful and able to achieve their goals, through hard work, recognition of their individual success and a relentless drive to ensure student achievement.
The curriculum instils resilience in our students the moment they enter the school and is continuous through their time with us. Encompassed within this innovative curriculum is our belief in a growth mindset. The belief that intelligence is far from fixed or inherited but an area we can all improve if we work hard and learn from our mistakes.
We encourage our students to experiment and take risks in their learning to establish an environment where intelligent failure is just the start on the road to success.
The Featherstone Academy is a lively, community academy which thrives on the positive relationships with parents and carers that support us and their child’s learning. We have unashamedly high expectations of our staff and students and look to promote a school friendly home to nurture and challenge our students.
We are a small school with an inclusive culture and warm ethos which is recognised by all who visit. Yet we have big ambitions to be a beacon of learning, aspirations and success for our local community.
The Featherstone Academy is working as part of The Rodillian Multi Academy (RMAT) to build upon February 2017 OFSTED grading of Outstanding for personal development, behaviour and welfare, and Good overall to ensuring it continues to increase the life chances of the students of this local community.
The Rodillian Multi Academy (RMAT) is a family of schools whose aim is to throw horizons wide open for students, schools and staff. A strong focus on resilience, growth mindset and positive discipline, the Rodillian Ethos has helped to transform The Featherstone Academy – from its culture to their Ofsted ratings – as well as the lives of students and teachers.
As part of The Rodillian Multi Academy Trust we are committed to providing private school opportunities in a modern comprehensive environment. Working alongside one of the country’s leading academies we are at the forefront of school improvement.
School location
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