Teaching Assistant - Sandford St Martin

LEARN – LOVE – LAUGH: at Sandford St Martin’s CE VA Primary.

Full time  (Mon-Fri 8:35-3:05 with 30 mins unpaid lunch break)

The governors and leadership team of our school wish to appoint a committed, experienced and professional Teaching Assistant to become part of our team and help support our fantastic KS1 children. The role is primarily to support a mixed age Year 1/2 class, with a high regard for developing phonics/early reading, mathematics and the wider curriculum with groups of children. At our school our staff work with a range of children in a mutually supportive team. We aim for our children to develop a range of positive relationships with regular access to trusted adults.

The successful applicant will be someone with a strong vocational commitment to improve the life chances of children, excellent team work skills, able to work on their own initiative but also under direction. You will be flexible and understand the combination of pressure and sheer joy that comes from working in a primary school! You will be committed to children of all abilities and backgrounds.

You will need boundless energy, patience, understanding, natural kindness, clear communication skills (both verbal and written) and a willingness to pull together in crucial team work. We are looking for specific skills and experience with teaching/learning groups of children in the core curriculum (alongside and under the direction of the class teacher). Experience to lead the class in a cover supervisor role is also highly desirable (where an uplift in pay is offered for these sessions).

We hope to interview and appoint as soon as possible. We do encourage candidates to tour the school, please contact the school office to arrange this on 01929 552949 or on [email protected] 

Sandford St Martin school values the diversity of our workforce and welcomes applications from all sectors of the community.

Our school is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people; this is a commitment which we expect all staff and volunteers to share. The successful candidate will be required to have a Disclosure and Barring Service check in line with the Governments safer recruitment guidelines.

This role is UK based and your Right to Work will need to be established as part of the appointment process.

This post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (ROA) 1974. The amendments to the ROA 1974 (Exceptions Order 1975, (2013 and 2020)) provide that when applying for certain jobs and activities, certain spent convictions and cautions are ‘protected’, so they do not need to be disclosed to employers, and if they are disclosed, employers cannot take them into account. The MOJ’s guidance on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and the Exceptions Order 1975, provides information about which convictions must be declared during job applications and related exceptions and further information about filtering offences can be found in the DBS filtering guide.

Keeping Children Safe in Education

Our school will conduct online searches of shortlisted candidates. This check will be part of a safeguarding check, and the search will purely be based on whether an individual is suitable to work with children. All aspects of social media and internet searches will be conducted. As care must be taken to avoid unconscious bias and any risk of discrimination, a person who will not on the appointment panel will conduct the searches and will only share information if and when findings are relevant and of concern.