Student Support Assistant (The Ropemakers Academy)

We are seeking to recruit a number of Student Support Assistants with a passion for supporting children with special needs at The Ropemakers’ Academy. This is a brand new special school and so you will be working within a purpose built new school building, teaching across the age ranges.

You will be working as part of a team that are responsible for developing, improving and delivering exciting and innovative provisions for children who are not succeeding in mainstream education, and require a nurturing, positive approach in order to achieve the best possible outcomes. 

We are looking for devoted, resilient staff who are able to utilise therapeutically based teaching strategies combined with a caring, understanding and nurturing approach to classroom and behaviour management. The successful candidates will also be excellent practitioners with a commitment to fulfilling the needs of pupils experiencing behavioural, emotional or learning difficulties, and social communication difficulties. The ability to motivate pupils towards high achievement is essential.  Excellent administrative, organisational and communication skills are also vital.

If you are already an outstanding practitioner or have the potential to be outstanding, if you work hard and thrive on challenge then we would like to hear from you. As well as modern facilities, we can offer you the opportunity to enhance your career through a comprehensive CPD package, and be part of a school that takes a collaborative and caring staff approach where you will have direct involvement and influence over the development of our provision offer to our community.

Working in a special school is not always easy. Our students are vulnerable, and can present with challenging behaviours when they are distressed. However, if your first instinct is seeing beyond those behaviours, and looking to provide love, care and kindness to meet their needs head on, then we really need to hear from you.

We need staff who are resilient, robust and nurturing whilst committed to providing children with a first class educational offer. Our core values are based around providing love. allowing our pupils to flourish, providing a sense of social justice and giving them a sense of community and identity.

By joining The Ropemakers’ Academy, you are joining a unique family. Our dedication to therapeutic practice and commitment to making our children feel safe provides our learners with some genuine life chances and choices. These approaches are combined with an ethos of collaborative and innovative teaching and provision delivery.

Life at Ropemakers can be challenging sometimes, but do not doubt how rewarding it also is. There is a continuous push to ensure that staff are well supported and developed, and that an open and transparent culture exists to maximise the quality of education.  We are still developing aspects of our provision, but this provides our staff an opportunity to help shape our work.

All applications should be submitted on the Beckmead Trust Staff Application form. Please note that we do not accept CVs.

You are strongly encouraged to come and visit the school and meet the team, to enable you to see our school in action and find out more about this exciting and unique opportunity to take your career in a new direction. so please get in touch with us to arrange for an informal meeting with our Headteacher, Mr. Simon Hawthorne, and have a tour of the school.

All enquiries and completed applications should be sent to recruitment@beckmeadtrust.org by the closing date.

The Beckmead Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our children and young people so expect all staff and volunteers, as well as those who work on the premises, to share this commitment. As part of our safeguarding commitment, appointment to any post is subject to receipt of satisfactory references, medical clearance to include the ability to participate in Physical Intervention and a satisfactory Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) Check as well as evidence of the right to live and work in the United Kingdom.  We will also carry out an online search on shortlisted candidates to help identify any incidents or issues that are publicly available online.