Teaching Assistant

At Northolt High School, our vision, mission and values underpin everything that we do. Our aim is to enable our students to develop strength of character, to be articulate and confident and to secure the best academic outcomes possible. Our school vision is "committed to excellence".

We work in partnership with an organisation called Sycol which supports us in ensuring that we have clear systems in place, which are developed and agreed by staff collectively. Termly innovation projects involve every member of staff, helping us to quickly and effectively share ideas whilst forging strong partnerships across the staff team. These projects ensure that systemic school improvement is embedded in everything we do whilst at the same time providing all staff members with a high quality leadership development programme.

Northolt High School is a Foundation School in the London Borough of Ealing. Ealing schools have traditionally worked very collaboratively and it is no coincidence that Ealing’s performance in national league tables is strong. Schools in Ealing have come together to form the Ealing Learning Partnership (ELP) in conjunction with the Council. This partnership provides us with a range of networks so that Northolt High School staff are able to share and develop ideas and practice with Ealing colleagues across a range of schools.

We are a relatively small school at the moment with 946 students on roll, but this number is increasing as the year progresses, because we are supporting Ealing Council by adding three additional classes onto our school roll over the course of this academic year. We also have a new building project on the horizon which we expect to make our school even more popular.

Our Inclusion Team is led by the Director of Inclusion who is also the school’s SENDCO. As our school becomes more popular we are finding that increased numbers of parents are naming our school for children who have Education, Health and Care Plans and we are therefore increasing the numbers of teaching assistants in our team in order to support this expansion. You will join a team of Teaching Assistants and Higher Level Teaching Assistants. The department is also supported by a SEND Administrator.

We can offer you:

• Great support and training as you develop your career;
• The opportunity to innovate and bring in new ideas to contribute towards improving our school;
• A caring and supportive professional environment, with attention paid to staff wellbeing and helping staff to maintain a good work / life balance;
• A thoughtful and well-structured school calendar with careful attention paid to balancing workload;
• A commitment to providing high quality opportunities for you to continue your professional learning.

Our recruitment process

One of the Ealing Learning Partnership projects we have been engaged with in the last two years is a ‘No Learner Left Behind’ project to improve the outcomes of our Black Caribbean students. Informed by our work on this project, we conduct an annual analysis of the ethnicity profile of our student body. Our long term aim is to ensure that the profile of our staff group matches that of our students. At the moment, we are underrepresented in the following ethnicity groups: Arab, Asian, Black Caribbean, Black African and Traveller of Irish Heritage. We would therefore welcome applications from candidates who would classify themselves as belonging to these groups.

We are introducing a ‘blind’ selection process this year which we also hope will support us in reducing the risk of any unintended bias during our recruitment process. You will see that our application form is in two parts. Part one, which contains details about candidates’ gender, ethnicity and age, is not shared with the staff who select candidates to bring them forward to the interview stage.

The school reserves the right to research shortlisted candidates on social media platforms and the internet, and the recruitment panel may take this information into consideration during the recruitment process.

A Job Description & Person Specification plus an application form can be found on our website: www.northolthigh.org.uk

If you would like to find out more about the school prior to your application, please contact Carol Gleeson, Executive Assistant to the Headteacher, on the email address below.

Please email your application to: cgleeson@northolthigh.org.uk.

Closing date: 12pm, Wednesday 18 January 2023

Interviews to be held on Monday 23 January 2023

The school is committed to safeguarding children and safer recruitment processes are always robustly followed. Successful candidates’ appointment will be subject to safer recruitment checks and satisfactory completion of an enhanced DBS check. Further information can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/disclosure-and-barring-service/about