Teacher of Science

Are you passionate about inspiring the next generation of scientists? Do you thrive in a vibrant, supportive educational environment? If so, we have the perfect opportunity for you!

The Westleigh School is committed to fostering academic excellence and personal growth. Our mission is to ignite curiosity, creativity, and a love for learning in our students. With state-of-the-art facilities and a collaborative teaching community, we provide an enriching environment where both students and teachers can thrive.

Our ethos is ‘Aspiring and Achieving Together’. Whilst we are committed to ensuring that every student makes excellent progress, this concept stretches well beyond academic performance. We firmly believe that every aspect of school should equip learners to be successful in all areas of their lives, both now and for their future. Indeed, every single decision or action taken improves the life chances of all our learners. This is underpinned by ensuring The Westleigh school is a safe, nurturing and happy environment: put simply, The Westleigh School is a great place to learn and a great place to work.

Uniting with The Shaw Education Trust brings with it new opportunities and a wealth of resources to supplement our mission to improve outcomes for all our students. Colleagues will have access to a large range of well-established training opportunities, such as a fully funded L5 Instructional Coaching qualification or Accelerated Leadership training, for those aspiring to Middle Leadership. Outstanding teachers will also achieve Trust Professional Advocate designation, which provides exciting opportunities to support colleagues within both The Westleigh School and across other SET schools to share best practice. With this brings the opportunity to engage in the cross-trust peer review and Trust CPD programme.

All candidates are required to provide a supporting statement on the formal application forms which states clearly your reasons for applying, skills and experience for this position.

Shaw Education Trust are a thriving mix of diverse and growing schools including Primary, Secondary and Special Schools all working together to improve the lives of young people in our communities. We are sponsored by Shaw Trust a charity organisation that focuses on transforming lives. Our schools span from Birmingham to Bury, meaning that we can support students from all walks of life, no matter their background or socioeconomic status. In doing this, we can help ensure all children are able to access a high standard of education, with all being treated equally.

In our secondary schools, we pride ourselves on our innovative approach to curriculum design, to ensure all our schools have breadth and ambition for all pupils, regardless of their starting points and barriers. Standard curriculum models don’t always engage all pupils, so we constantly seek to innovate and provide better opportunities to develop both knowledge and skills for life. We want our pupils to believe their curriculum is bold, exciting, purposeful, and ultimately leads to something meaningful for them. Some examples of our innovation include moving towards an extended school day, to provide a world class enrichment programme and more opportunities for essential skills like reading and cultural capital. We are also introducing a vocational and technical pathways, which run through the normal school curriculum but attract support from leading employers and universities to develops work-readiness in our pupils, so that they can progress onto T Levels and apprenticeships.

Our secondary schools are currently driving ‘PedTech’ across the sector: we believe teaching and technology should go hand-in-glove and are passionately committed towards providing a fully digitally enhanced curriculum. We are very close to achieving full 1:1 device delivery and are sprinting towards better use of iPads in lessons to enhance the experience and learning.

Shaw Education Trust offer the following benefits with your Teaching or Support Staff employment:

• An excellent Local Government Pension Scheme (Support Staff) / Teachers Pension (Teaching Staff)
• Support Staff only based on working full time, all year - Generous holiday entitlement from your first day of employment (37 days holiday rising to 39 days after 5 years’ service including Bank Holidays)
• Access to health and wellbeing support via Occupational Health
• Cycle to work scheme
• Access to our Institute of Education and fantastic opportunities to help you grow, contribute and flourish in your role and in the Trust.

Colleagues within the Trust benefit from:

• Access to a full range of courses both in-house and professionally accredited. These courses include all of the National Professional Qualifications – NPQH, NPQSL, NPQEYL, NPQLL, NPQLT, NPQLTD, NPQLBC are all delivered by the Shaw Education Trust as a delivery partner for Ambition Institute. In addition, we provide access to the NPQEL for Executive Leaders.
• Experienced leadership and subject-specific support.
• Guidance from former HMIs and serving Ofsted Inspectors within the Trust.
• Access to the Trust’s Teaching School, Research School, Institute of Education and SCITT.
• Opportunities to work with different schools within the Trust as a Professional Advocate.
• Participating in peer reviews.
• Access to a suite of online courses.
• Placement projects within our family of schools.

The Westleigh School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment, click here to review Safeguarding and Pupil Protection Policy https://www.shaw-education.org.uk/our-trust/key-information

This position is subject to appropriate vetting procedures including an online checks and criminal record check from the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly CRB) which will require you to disclose details of all unspent and unfiltered spent reprimands, formal warnings, cautions and convictions.

All shortlisted candidates will undergo an online search as part of Trust safer recruitment checks.

We are an Equal Opportunities employer and will ensure that all our recruitment and selection practices reflect this commitment.

In accordance with our safer recruitment policy CV’s alone will not be accepted.

Application deadline:    Friday, 24th May 2024 at 9am  

Interview date:               TBC

We reserve the right to appoint before the closing date, therefore, we encourage early applications.

Successful candidates will be subject to a fully Enhanced DBS check along with other relevant employment checks.