We are recruiting for two posts with this role.
Job Description
Job Title: Schools Engagement Coordinator (Inspiring the Future)
Reports to: Head of School Programmes
Location: Quantum House, 22 – 24 Red Lion Court, Fleet Street, EC4A 3AB. The role is open to hybrid working but the candidate would be expected to be in the office one day per week
Purpose: This is a fantastic opportunity to take on one of 2 posts in the role of Schools Engagement Coordinator for Education and Employers on the internationally recognised Inspiring the Future programme. The Charity aims to ensure that all young people have the inspiration, motivation, knowledge, skills and opportunities they need to help them achieve their potential.
This key post is part of the Schools Engagement Team with responsibility for working closely with primary school and secondary school teachers and leaders to support them with running activities involving a diverse range of volunteers from the world of work. The role is rewarding and varied and will include supporting delivery of funded projects aimed at these audiences and general administrative support.
Remuneration: £23.5-25k per annum
Additional Terms: 30 days paid holiday, exclusive of Statutory Holiday plus competitive pension scheme and a volunteering allowance of up to 5 days – pro rata in accordance with the length of contract. Additional family friendly benefits including enhancements to Statutory Payments.
Appointment Terms: Permanent and full time
Job Purpose:
Reporting to the Head of Schools Programmes, the Schools Engagement Coordinator is responsible for working closely with school staff in promoting and empowering schools to utilise Inspiring the Future and Primary Futures, alongside delivering virtual activities for schools. These programmes are an online system connecting schools to an enormous range of fascinating volunteers from the world of work for virtual or in person activities to raise aspirations, provide insight into jobs, tackle stereotypes and demonstrate how learning at school in the present links to opportunities in the future.
This role will be split between supporting the general self-service programme for schools nationally in an administrative capacity and delivering on funded projects including delivering activities to a case load of schools across parts of the country. There is opportunity to interface directly with children and young people from both secondary and primary schools. through facilitating virtual and in person interactive activities with volunteers.
Education and Employers is a small charity working at a rapid pace to bring about change. This is a dynamic role for someone looking to gain a breadth of experience in the charity sector and keen to learn about the education sector and career-related learning, social mobility and volunteer engagement. We are looking for someone passionate about motivating and inspiring children who relishes working with a range of stakeholders to create impactful activities.
The Engagement Coordinator will work closely with the Head of School Programmes and wider Inspiring the Future team to take responsibility for the successful delivery of the Key Accountabilities below.
Key Accountabilities:
The following areas are broken down to reflect the proportion of the role dedicated to each area, over the course of the academic year, with priorities differing at different times of year
1. Enquiries management and administrative support across the programme team (30%):
- Managing the enquiries inbox and switchboard phone number, responding to enquiries from schools and volunteers about the charity’s work and programmes and how to sign up
- Providing targeted support to schools such as phone calls to primary, secondary schools and colleges independently utilising the programmes using a RAG (red, amber, green) system to convert them to successful activities
- Providing administrative support across the volunteer and school engagement teams, including record-keeping, data entry, meeting minute-taking, scheduling, event coordination, etc
- Monitoring new registrations from schools and sending welcome emails, keeping this up-to-date with the latest opportunities and messaging for schools
- Use Salesforce CRM to support with data management, assisting with maintaining up to date records and supporting data cleansing as needed
- Other ad-hoc administrative tasks as needed
2. Increasing the engagement of primary, secondary schools and colleges to independently use the Primary Futures/Inspiring the Future platform (30%)
- Supporting new teacher registrants with onboarding processes such as welcome emails, platform demonstrations, info webinars
- Writing and coordinating persuasive communications campaigns to different groups of schools that have an interest in engaging with volunteers from the world of work
- In collaboration with rest of team, identifying need for and developing new resources and guidance to meet teacher needs and support them to make the most of our offers
- In collaboration with rest of team, develop and implement new processes and technical improvements, to support increased school engagement.
3. Supporting project delivery of various funded projects with funders, including government and corporates (30%)
- Recruiting and engaging schools according to the geographic or sector focus of a funded project
- Managing relationships with a case load of schools in different areas of the country to host planning calls, deliver sessions, gather evaluation data and ensure a legacy of independent usage
- Setting up virtual and face-to-face activities including school liaison, securing volunteers, test calls, setting up on the Inspiring the Future system and hosting on tech platforms (Zoom, MS Teams, Google Classrooms, etc)
- Facilitating virtual and face to face activities to pupils to link with volunteers, hosting and designing themed sessions online to ensure an interactive and engaging experience for children and volunteers, following a Q&A or job guessing-game format.
- Supporting and co-hosting sessions to teachers including teacher training, staff meetings and info webinars to promote Inspiring the Future, deepen engagement and demonstrate independent usage
- Supporting the development of educational resources that provide insight into the world of work and different sectors
Other (10%)
- Other ad hoc tasks to support the team as needed, such as administration of school competitions, etc
Person specification:
Skills/ Knowledge/ Expertise
Essential
- Minimum one year’s experience in a customer service, school engagement or school based role
- Experience in successful relationship management – ability to engage confidently and sensitively with schools/colleges and at a range of levels of seniority up to and including headteacher level
- Outstanding customer service and telephone manner, including handling large volumes of email enquiries and dealing with difficult situations politely and assertively
- Strong organisational and administrative skills including close attention to detail and effective time management
- Persuasive and confident communicator who is influential, and effective in presenting a concept both in person and on the phone.
- Good level of education, demonstrating capability in producing written content to a high standard.
- Demonstrable experience of managing a diverse workload; being able to prioritise work and working under pressure.
- Good working knowledge and practical application of Microsoft Office tools
Desirable
- Passion for supporting young people in realising their potential through harnessing skilled volunteers to engage in education
- Experience in virtual facilitation with children and young people
- Experience of project management and delivery
- Experience of client relationships management (CRM) databases, in particular Salesforce
- Experience of marketing to schools
- Experience of working in a small team
- Experience of working with volunteers
- Understanding of safeguarding, risk management and data protection
- Comfort and confidence in working with data to inform actions
Personal Attributes
- Uphold our charity’s values – Inspiring, Inclusive, Innovative, Impactful, Integrity
- Flexible – responsive to changing operational context and new opportunities
- Team Player: working collaboratively and flexibly to achieve outcomes and is keen to add value to the organisation’s culture and ethos
- Able to undertake some occasional work in the evenings and at weekends
- Able to travel in the UK if required
Application process
The Education and Employers charity values having a diverse workforce. We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals from all backgrounds. We offer a range of inclusive employment and family friendly policies as well as flexible working arrangements in order to support staff from different backgrounds.
The closing date for applications is 9am on Friday 5th January 2024 and interviews will take place on Thursday 11th January. The organisation reserves the right to conduct interviews and appoint prior to the closing date dependent on the calibre of applications received.
Please send a covering letter setting out your interest in and suitability for the role and a CV to jobs@educationandemployers.org
Please note we will only consider applications with both a CV and covering letter and applications will only be accepted from those with the right to work in the UK with a valid passport/visa.
The Charity is fully committed to safeguarding those in our care. We plan our recruitment processes to ensure effective timelines for any required vetting processes such as enhanced DBS, qualification, reference and identity checks. The Charity also ensures that each staff member is appropriately trained for their duties with a comprehensive induction process on commencement.
About the Education and Employers charity
Education and Employers is an independent UK based charity launched in 2009 with the vision of “providing children and young people with the inspiration, motivation, knowledge, skills and opportunities they need to help them achieve their potential”. It aims to achieve this by working with schools, employers, the national bodies that represent them and a wide range of other partners including the government and third sector organisations. The charity also works with partners internationally – more details here.
The charity runs Inspiring the Future, a free service which uses innovative match-making technology to connect volunteers with state schools and colleges, quickly, simply and at scale. Schools can very easily search a massive database of willing volunteers, filter against a wide range of criteria – e.g. subject, sector, career route and send them a message. It enables young people, wherever they live, whichever school they attend, the opportunity to meet people from a wide range of backgrounds doing jobs from across the whole world of work.
Nearly 85,000 people have already volunteered in the UK – people from all levels: apprentices to CEOs and all sectors: apps designers to zoologists and over 85% of English secondary schools have registered. People can volunteer from an hour a year in a local primary or secondary school to chat informally about their job and career route, take part in career speed networking session, give careers insights, provide mock interviews or feedback on CVs through to serving as a governor or trustee. There is also the opportunity to link up with schools for workplace visits, job shadowing and mentoring.
Inspiring the Future operates on a technology platform kindly developed in partnership with Deloitte, Salesforce and Ordnance Survey. It allows the charity to run national campaigns others focused on specific geographic areas or economic sectors such as engineering, science, health and arts and culture. The campaigns have secured high profile support across government, business and teacher associations and ongoing corporate partnerships including our lead corporate partner Bank of America.
In partnership with the National Association of Head Teachers the charity has developed a version for primary schools called Primary Futures and over 6,500 primaries have already signed up. To see a short clip on how it works please click here. All campaigns run through Inspiring the Future share a common objective: to broaden young people’s horizons, raise their aspirations and show them the range of opportunities and careers routes e.g. apprenticeships and university open to them. Over 3.5 million interactions between young people and volunteers from the world of work have already taken place.
The charity runs Inspiring Governance the free governor recruitment and support service. This Department for Education funded service aims to get highly skilled volunteers to serve as governors in some of the most disadvantaged schools in England and in so doing help raise educational achievement.
Since the Charity’s launch it has sought to understand what difference employer engagement in education makes to young people and the economy. It works with academics and researchers from around the world and its own research is regularly cited by government and international organisations like the OECD. The research, which has informed and influenced a range of government policies, shows that employer engagement helps improve social mobility, reduces the likelihood of young people becoming NEET (not in education, employment of training), increases the amount they earn in adult life, helps them make better informed career choices and leads to improvements in educational attainment.