Early Years Education Lead

Thrive at Five Introduction

Thrive at Five’s vision is a society where every child can thrive and achieve their potential.

Our mission is to help children develop strong foundations for life and learning, in and alongside communities where families face the most challenges.

We work in Stoke-on-Trent, Redcar & Cleveland and Middlesbrough and are excited to be starting our first programme in Scotland, partnering with West Dunbartonshire Council to join up and strengthen early years systems so children can thrive from pregnancy to five.

Our goal, everywhere we work, is to achieve long-term, sustained improvements in children’s developmental outcomes. In England, one of the ways we measure this is through the proportion of children reaching a Good Level of Development by age five. In Scotland, we will be measuring impact through the health visitor data at 4-5 years and 27-30 months, alongside other robust indicators.

Our work is rooted in place and built on long-term partnership. We commit to working with and for communities to build trust, embed change and support sustainable improvement. Alongside delivery, we capture learning from each place to develop a practical, experience-informed playbook that supports wider system improvement.

Purpose of the role

The Early Years Education Lead will work with local schools and early years settings to ensure that the potential for children to reach positive developmental outcomes is maximised. This role will lead the process to co-design workstreams to enable the high-quality implementation of evidence-based interventions with our partners, as well supporting the evaluation of these in collaboration with the Learning & Impact team.

Key accountabilities

Relationship building

• Support the Scotland Director in building excellent relationships with key decision makers related in early years and maintaining these relationships to ensure we can deliver successful and impactful partnerships.
• Work with key external stakeholders to create understanding and buy in to Thrive at Five’s vision including understanding of our model and workstreams.
• Work in partnership with schools and early years settings to build strong and trusting relationships through regular meetings with key early years stakeholders.
• Build, manage and sustain working groups to ensure local stakeholders are empowered to fully participate in and take co-ownership of workstreams developed in partnership with Thrive at Five.
• Ensure that working groups include representation from all parts of the early years system.
• Act as an ambassador for Thrive at Five at local, regional and national events.

Designing and supporting the implementation of workstreams

• Work in partnership with key stakeholders within early years settings to codesign sustainable workstreams which support better outcomes for children in line with Thrive at Five’s Theory of Change through evidence-based interventions.
• Ensure workstreams reflect insights from the discovery phase, using Thrive at Five’s playbook to support this process while taking into account local context and what is already being delivered.
• Work in collaboration with key stakeholders to support high quality implementation and evaluation of these workstreams, including working closely with the Learning & Impact team to ensure data and lessons learned from evaluation are used to further improve practice.
• Support the Scotland Director and local stakeholders to strengthen local practice across settings, helping to bring in relevant external expertise to ensure local best practice is shared.

Strategy and implementation

• Support the Scotland Director, to collaborate with Central teams and ensure strategy, implementation and evaluation plans are developed for all workstreams, ensuring relevant sign off processes are followed
• Contribute to the ongoing development of the Thrive at Five Playbook, sharing lessons learned, including challenges encountered.

Policies, Procedures and Compliance

• Be familiar with, and comply with all organisational policies, procedures and guidelines.
• Promote and support initiatives that contribute to aa healthy and safe working environment for all employees, contractors and visitors.
• Ensure compliance with Health and Safety policies and legislative requirements.

Other duties may be reasonably assigned to this position in consultation with your manager.

Qualifications and Experience

A teaching qualification or equivalent in early years education, and experience of leading and managing in schools or settings. We would welcome applicants with a background in teaching or Early Learning and Childcare leadership, system improvement and support, or equivalent.

Ability to think strategically and creatively about new approaches or ways of working which embed prevention and support measurable improvements in outcomes for children and families.

Knowledge and Skills

• Ability to work confidently in and across early years settings and / or primary schools.
• Ability to build effective relationships with stakeholders within early years settings and schools in our target neighbourhoods.
• Sound knowledge of early years development and the frameworks that support it.
• Experience of facilitating and convening partners around shared goal and of overseeing projects that require stakeholder management across different levels and organisations.
• High levels of empathy, passion and care for those in the community.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to communicate with different groups of people.
• Excellent organisational skills.
• Alignment to our organisational values.
• Digitally savvy with skills in Microsoft 365.

Interviews for this role will be in person in Dumbarton Wednesday 23rd or Thurs 24 September

To apply, submit your CV and covering letter

Benefits

Pension contributions – We will contribute 3% and you can contribute 5% towards your pension through NEST.

• 25 annual leave days per year plus bank holidays
• £100 contribution towards your professional body membership
• Enhanced sick leave and maternity pay (following qualifying period)