Teaching Assistant level 1

Teaching Assistant (Level 1) – Required for January 2025

33 hours – Fixed Term Contract to 31st December 2025

At St Luke’s we are looking to appoint Level 1 Teaching Assistants who will have the opportunity to participate in a fixed term Development Programme to acquire the knowledge and skills to become a successful Teaching Assistant.

This is fixed term contract until 31st December 2025.  During your contract you will work and be paid for your contracted hours in a class and have specific development tasks to help support and expand your understanding of children with Special Educational Needs and how to best support them in a classroom environment.  The areas of development that you will learn about include:

• Understanding the different needs of the children (including autism, physical needs and speech and language development)
• Understanding and supporting children with challenging behaviour – at St Luke’s we follow a therapeutic approach to support children, which focusses on understanding the children’s needs and putting strategies in place to reduce potential incidents
• Moving and Handling Training
• How to best support a teacher within a busy classroom environment
• Developing your understanding of communication skills, including Makaton signing
• Understanding child development

Alongside specific training sessions you will also be assigned a mentor who will support your development.  Over the year you will produce a portfolio of work to demonstrate what you have learnt.  Your portfolio will include certificates of training, completed assignments and a personal reflective journal.  Please note this development programme does not provide you with a recognised official Teaching Assistant Qualification.

This is an exciting opportunity for candidates.  As a comprehensive training package will be given no experience of working in schools is required for this role. 

At the end of the contract and successful completion of the development programme, you will be able to apply for any vacancies available at St Luke’s or take your development portfolio to apply for other posts.

If you are interested in this opportunity then please contact Alastair Sutherland (01724 844560) or email head@stlukesprimary.com

Informal visits are encouraged, this will give you the opportunity to see the school and talk more about this new, exciting role.

CLOSING DATE: Tuesday 29th October 2024 (Applications received after 9:00am will not be considered)

Why join us?

We offer:

Competitive salaries

Local Government Pension Scheme with employer contributions up to 18.5%

Generous annual leave and Bank Holiday entitlement

Flexible and agile working

A modern workplace with access to great technology

Salary sacrifice schemes- ie the option to purchase additional holidays or a bike to cycle to work

Family friendly policies supporting fostering, adoption and caring responsibilities

Our values and culture

We stay true to our values:

Equality of opportunity so everyone can have a good quality of life.

Striving for excellence and high standards.

Using our resources wisely and with integrity.

Promoting self-responsibility and people having choice and control over their own lives.

Our organisational goals are to be:

Progressive and enabling in our approach.

Financially and environmentally sustainable.

Safer recruitment

As an employer, we will:

· Promote and safeguard the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expect the same commitment from existing and prospective employees or volunteers.

· Commit to the recruitment of a diverse workforce to best meet the needs of our customers.

· Ensure that recruitment decisions are based on reasonable and objective criteria, free from bias or unfair discrimination.

· Provide training for recruiters to ensure they are fully equipped with the skills to recruit the best people.

· Make reasonable adjustments to any aspect of the process to meet individual need, where known.

Please note that new guidance in Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022 requires us to carry out an online search as part of our due diligence on shortlisted candidates. This to enable us to identify any incidents or issues which have happened and are publicly available online which we might want to explore at interview. Once shortlisting has taken place, this search will be carried out for all candidates who will attend an interview.

All applicants must be permitted to work in the UK and hold a relevant work permit where necessary. If you have lived or worked outside of the UK in the last 5 years, we will also require additional information in order to comply with safer recruitment requirements. Any job offer will be conditional on the satisfactory completion of the necessary pre-employment checks and receipt of satisfactory references which will be sought prior to interview.

The above post will be subject to a DBS check, satisfactory references and will be exempt from the provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. DBS Code of Practice which can be viewed here (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ds-code-of-practice) 'It is an offence for anyone barred from working with children or adults to apply to work in regulated activity with that group'

This post is also subject to satisfactory references, proof of right to work in the UK and other pre-employment checks where applicable.