Tutor – Transforming Teaching

The IfT is a specialist graduate school for teachers. Our courses have a single purpose - to help teachers to keep getting better.

We believe that having an expert teacher in every classroom is the best way to make sure that every pupil, regardless of their background, gets a great education. But teaching is complex and becoming an expert isn’t easy. To improve teaching we must improve the training teachers receive because most of what’s out there isn’t helping them to get better. That’s why we are doing things differently - re-thinking teacher education and providing a progression pathway to expertise that is taught by a faculty of expert teacher educators. Teachers deserve as much effort to go into their training as they put into their teaching.

We are looking for an experienced leader to join our team. We welcome applications from both primary and secondary specialists. Our Tutors are senior figures in our regional delivery team, managing relationships with different stakeholders. In addition to delivering outstanding training sessions to teachers and teacher educators, Tutors support our schools to implement coaching and co-planning models. In this they will be accountable for the quality of this in-school coaching and co-planning. Tutors play a key role in our quality assurance and impact monitoring, requiring them to liaise with a number of key stakeholders in order to support the design and evaluation of our programmes.

To excel in this role, the post-holder will need to able to build relationships with people at varying levels of seniority, motivate people to change their practice, and hold them to account. They should be flexible, highly organised and detail orientated. They will be a self-starter, flexible and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve our goals.

What is the role?

This is an opportunity to join a high performing team committed to ensuring that all children get an excellent education. The Tutor will:

• Have responsibility for management of relationships with school leaders from portfolio of schools;
• Ensure that training is tailored to suit different participants and schools engaged with the programme and liaise with design team and other members of delivery team to ensure that training is pitched accurately to enable highest impact;
• Lead high quality training sessions across a range of programmes pitched at teachers and teacher educators at different stages of development and designed to transform teaching;
• Develop coaching practice within a portfolio of schools through effective face-to-face training, the modelling of expert coaching with teacher educators and effective feedback to teacher educators employing the model;
• Systematically quality assure the impact of coaching, co-planning and training on teacher progress through a variety of means e.g. observation of teaching in partnership schools, engagement with participant voice, collection of participant feedback and through focus groups with key stakeholders;
• Develop strong relationships with teachers at different levels;
• Be able to apply a variety of strategies to overcome barriers to progress and problem solving, both at participant and school level;
• Ensure up-to-date and in depth understanding of approaches to training through independent study and routine engagement with design team materials and publications;
• Advocate for the programme and institution;
• Other duties as required to support an effective programme.

Knowledge, Skills & Networks

To excel in the role, the Tutor will need to:

• Have a track record of excellent teaching and delivering exceptional outcomes for pupils living in social deprivation and those with low prior attainment;
• Have experience in teacher training and development, including coaching and mentoring teachers;
• Have a strong understanding of best practice in teaching and learning;
• Have experience of curriculum/assessment design and able to analyse teaching skills/lesson moments, breaking them down into their smallest constituent parts;
• Have held a leadership role in a school with line management responsibilities;
• Be skilled in management of important relationships with a range of individuals and organisations;
• Be passionate about teacher and school development;
• Be open and hungry for feedback, driven by continual improvement, and able to hold themselves and those around them to account for securing excellent pupil outcomes;
• Have the ability to think creatively and problem-solve;
• Be a committed and generous team worker, to whom going above and beyond expectations for their colleagues is second nature.