Class Teacher (NQTs Welcome)

**Please scroll to the bottom of this page to view our live vacancies**

Columbus School and College was formerly two separate special needs schools in Chelmsford –Woodlands School in Patching Hall Lane and The Hayward School in Maltese Road.

Woodlands School served children with profound and multiple learning difficulties and complex learning difficulties aged 3–19 years. The Hayward School served children with moderate learning difficulties and autism aged 4–16.

The two schools federated in 2005 to form Chelmsford New Model Special School with a single governing body. There were two campuses – Woodlands Campus and Hayward Campus.

On the 1 September 2009 the two schools formally amalgamated to form Columbus School and College. The School Campus in Patching Hall Lane currently has pupils aged from Nursery to Year 10 and the College Campus in Oliver Way currently has students from Years 10 to 14. There is an FE Department on College Campus which has students from Year 12 to Year 14.

Graded as 'outstanding' by Ofsted in 2010 and 2014, Columbus is a leading all age special school for children and young people with severe and profound learning difficulties. The school became an academy in May 2012 and is part of Academies Enterprise Trust. Columbus delivers an outstanding education in its new, purpose-built environment.

Our Curriculum

Columbus offers a broad and varied curriculum for all children and young people. Whilst recognising the need to provide access to all the subjects and learning experiences from the National Curriculum, we acknowledge the need to combine this with a more  holistic view of learning with a focus upon a number of skills that can be challenging for our young people.

Our Key Skills Curriculum is designed to support lifelong learning, enabling us to do just that by intertwining subject specific learning experiences with opportunities to develop communication skills, problem solving skills, motor development, independence and social skills. personal, social and health skills, communication skills, applying and using mathematics, motor development, information technology skills, study skills and problem solving skills.

Our subject specific, specialist learning environments, motor therapy suites and sensory rooms support the Columbus teaching and learning teams to focus intensively upon the individual sensitivities and impairments of each child and young person in a specifically designed, supportive space. The work done in these spaces is heavily supported by our resident Therapists and their Assistants with much of what is designed and delivered in these specialist rooms being transferred into the classroom throughout the school week.

Community-based learning features on every child and young person’s timetable every week. We believe that the earlier we start social and independence building skills, the more chance at success we have for the future. Community-based learning experiences include basic travel training, visits to the local shops, horse riding or perhaps even a visit to the hairdressers! For our younger children, we make visits that relate to early learning or mobility skills or visits to places that link to a topic or project.

Our older students access learning and social opportunities in the local community that will aid them to enter the world of work or help them to access independent or semi-independent living. Experiences for our older students include college placements, travel training, health and fitness, the exploration of new hobbies and interests as well as activities relating to independent living tasks and routines.

Columbus extends its curriculum to offer education journeys both abroad and within the UK in order to broaden our young people's learning and social experiences.

WHY JOIN OUR ACADEMY?

Staff Benefits

Development:

We are committed to developing all staff at all levels through high quality development opportunities, resources, and experiences  that will support you on your professional learning journey with AET.

Lifestyle:

We champion agile/flexible working across the Trust to help our people achieve an optimal work/life balance.

Money:

All staff have access to our pension schemes (Local Government Pension Scheme and Teachers’ Pension Scheme).  Everyone has free access to financial advice & support and can access a wide range of retail discounts through our AET Benefits scheme. We also offer Technology Loans to help with any big digital purchases.

Wellbeing:

We recognise that mental wellbeing is just as important as physical and have set up employee assistance programmes which offer free and confidential counselling 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our employees can access our health cash place scheme from BHSF.

OUR TRUST

This is a hugely exciting time to be joining the organisation, and as we pivot from being in turnaround mode to becoming a high performance organisation on the pathway to sustainable excellence. This will see us building our in-house education improvement capacity and expertise, making sure that our schools have all the support they need to deliver an excellent education for every child, every day.

Our people are our single greatest resource and we want to make sure we are creating the optimum environment and conditions so that everyone in AET can do their very best work. We will only deliver on our promise of excellence for all of our children if we attract, develop and retain the very best talent in the country and surround them with exceptional development throughout their careers.

We want people on our team who are excited by scale and the prospect of having a deep and lasting impact on the lives of tens of thousands of children. We also want people who are intellectually rigorous, stay curious, and generous enough to be committed to the messy challenge of collaboration.

AET has an exciting future ahead and by joining us on this journey, you will have an unparalleled opportunity to make a lasting and meaningful impact on the children and young people in our schools.

Equality, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

At AET, we want all of our employees to feel included bringing their passion, creativity and individuality to work. We value all cultures, backgrounds and experiences, and we truly believe that diversity drives innovation.

We also offer teacher training programmes across our network. For more information please click here.

To find out more about AET please click here.