Vacancies

Head of Drama 

Salary – Inner London Payscale plus TLR responsibility

Starting September 2024

At Northolt High School, our vision, mission and values underpin everything that we do. We 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". This summarises our core aim of continuous improvement. Our mission statement describes how we work to achieve this core aim - through "seizing opportunity, instilling ambition, realising potential". Join us and you will be welcomed by a hard-working, dedicated staff and subject team who are united in their focus on student achievement. 

We work in partnership with an organisation called Sycol which supports us in ensuring that we have clear systems of continuous school improvement in place. Through this partnership, all members of staff in the school are part of a high quality leadership development programme. Termly innovation projects involve every member of staff, helping us 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. We are united in our focus to continuously improve and develop; this results in a tangible energy and drive across our whole staff team as we learn and move forward together.

We are a relatively small school at the moment with 985 students on roll and are growing in size in the coming years, with a new building project on the horizon. We maintain a broad and balanced curriculum offer for all students. Our intention is to develop the school so that it has STEAM specialism (the ‘A’ is for Art) whilst at the same time retaining a breadth of curriculum offer for our students. You will join a Performing Arts team as the sole Drama specialist. Our Drama curriculum is clearly mapped so you will have a clear pathway for students’ learning provided and we will obviously welcome any suggestions you have for improving this. 

We will be the right school for you if you are committed to:

• Ensure outstanding progress and attainment in the Drama department;

• Play a full part in termly innovation projects to contribute to the development of school- wide continuous improvement;

• Promote the profile of the Drama department through contributions to the extra-curricular and wider life of the school.

We can offer you:

• Great support and training as you develop your career (we have a well developed approach to professional development including a superb dedicated CPD website);;

• The opportunity to innovate and bring in new ideas to contribute towards improving our school;

• A caring and supportive professional environment, with an early finish every Friday to promote a good work / life balance;

• A thoughtful and well-structured school calendar with careful attention paid to balancing teacher 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 under-represented 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 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

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, the Headteacher’s PA on the email address below.

Please email your application to the Headteacher’s PA at: recruitment@northolthigh.org.uk.

Final closing date: midday on Tuesday 21st May 2024

Interviews to be held on application