Head of Art & Music

Welcome to Wilsthorpe School, a member of The Two Counties Trust

There are many reasons to choose our school, and the Trust, as a great place to start or develop your career. We recognise the importance of happy, rewarded, and motivated employees and as such we have developed our HR and Professional Learning strategies to invest in people.

We are fully committed to supporting your career and professional growth through a range of routes both within the school, externally, and across the Trust, offering extensive professional learning for all employees.

We have removed appraisal and appraisal related progression, recognising the limitations and changed the focus from proving to improving through professional growth which is focused on individual ambitions, enabling everyone to get a little bit better all the time.

We are committed to your welfare as an employee and alongside our own wellbeing and workload management arrangements we have signed up to the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter. If you need additional support on a range of matters, an Employee Assistance Programme is available to you from day one of employment.

We offer highly competitive pay, including some points above national rate, an array of employee benefits including extensive high street retail discounts, gym membership and discounted healthcare.

There are an array of centralised systems which are designed to save you time and avoid duplication of effort, these are based on the work of experts across the Trust, meaning that your time can be focused where you need it to be.

We hope you will join us in a great environment where you can work with a team of dedicated and like-minded professionals.

Welcome from the Headteacher

On the wall, when you first step through the main entrance at Wilsthorpe School, are some words that sum up what the school is about: “learning should be an inspirational journey, in a climate of dignity and respect”. These two guiding principles – education focused on both academic rigour and positive regard for each other – are at the heart of the Wilsthorpe family. Students and employees alike talk about “excellence in learning” and “relationships first”. Wilsthorpe is a school that takes academic success seriously, but always alongside empathy, character and kindness.

In 2018, the Wilsthorpe community moved out of a sprawling, dilapidated building into state-of-the-art facilities. This has given curriculum areas ownership of teaching spaces and has given teachers ownership of their individual classrooms. The school was identified by the government in 2021 as one of the first 50 schools to benefit from an investment of £1 billion over the coming years, to transform the final sections of the site, so that our students have access to the very latest resources. In spite of this leap forward in the school’s facilities, what hasn’t changed is the school’s emphasis on those two key tenets of a great education: “excellence in learning” and “relationships first”.

The school was originally a Business and Enterprise College, but now boasts a broad curriculum with a strong core of maths, English and Science at its heart, alongside genuine sporting excellence, very high levels of participation in the Arts and D&T, and a growing Languages department.

Amongst the 1,140 students, the Humanities subjects are notably popular at both GCSE and A Level, as well as a range of IT and Computing qualifications. As part of The Two Counties Trust, the school is now part of a wider family of schools offering exceptional opportunities for professional development and sharing common values of “Ambition, Teamwork and Honesty”.

The school community is particularly proud of its Sixth Form, which in recent years has achieved the highest value-added scores of any local state provider. The curriculum in Years 12-13 is sufficiently broad to cater for students' interests and aspirations, alongside small-group teaching and personalised care and guidance. The school is heavily oversubscribed across all year groups.

Looking to the future, the same things that have brought about transformational progress over the past 10 years – a passion for learning alongside supportive relationships – will take the school towards becoming the outstanding institution its students deserve. At its last inspection, OFSTED commented, “Leaders have high expectations of pupils at Wilsthorpe School. Pupils succeed because they understand and live out these expectations. Pupils demonstrate the school’s values of ambition, teamwork and honesty. This prepares them well for life in modern society. The result is a vibrant school.  Pupils behave very well”. Both employees and students themselves describe Wilsthorpe as “a second family”. Wilsthorpe is indeed a place where employees and students alike can flourish.

If you haven’t already, I recommend that you visit the school and see us in action. We are always happy to meet prospective applicants and to talk openly and honestly about the school and the post on offer. 

Derek Hobbs

The Two Counties Trust

With secondary schools across Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, we are an ambitious Trust with a strong reputation. We have nine secondary schools, over 11,000 students and 1,500 employees.

We exist to provide our students with opportunities and experiences to enhance their life choices, making a positive contribution to the world we share. Collectively we serve our communities by educating and preparing our students for the next steps in their lives.

Leaders across the Trust are fully committed to striving for excellence in all that we do. We understand that families trust us each day with their most prized possession i.e their child, and we all are here to serve the students in our care.

Our values are:

Ambition:   We maximise our potential through striving for excellence.

Teamwork: We give 100% effort, displaying kindness and humility for the benefit of all.

Honesty:    We are respectfully open about our successes and areas for growth.

To find out more about us, please go to The Two Counties Trust website.

We look forward to welcoming you to our Trust in the near future.

IIMPORTANT INFORMATION

Please note that it is an offence to apply for this role if you are barred from engaging in Regulated Activity relevant to children.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. Any offer of employment will be subject to the receipt of a satisfactory Enhanced DBS disclosure with a children's barred list check, receipt of references and successful completion of vetting procedures.

In accordance with the statutory guidance Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE), an online search will be conducted as part of due diligence on shortlisted candidates to identify incidents or issues that may have happened, and which are publicly available online, which we may need to explore with shortlisted candidates.

The school's child protection policy can be located at: www.Wilsthorpe.ttct.co.uk/our-school/policies.

The Trust's policy on the employment of ex-offenders can be located at: www.ttct.co.uk/our-trust/policies.

We are a Disability Confident Employer and as such we are committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce. Candidates with a disability who meet the minimum job criteria will be given an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities at interview.