Pastoral Practitioner

Full Job Description

Job Title:              Pastoral Practitioner

Location:              New Barn School, Newbury, Berkshire

Salary:                  £24,000 per annum

Hours:                  40 hours per week

Contract:              Permanent; term time

Be the Pastoral member you’ve always wanted to be!

As part of our continued growth, we now have a fantastic opportunity for a Pastoral Practitioner to join New Barn School. If you are looking to join a dedicated team in a school that will welcome your ideas and aim to re-engage the young people we teach, come join our team.

Service Overview

New Barn School offers a broad, balanced and relevant curriculum to boys and girls, aged 6 – 19 years who have Social, Emotional and Mental Health complexities.

New Barn School takes full advantage of its beautiful settings and fosters a love for using the outdoor curriculum including forest school, farm experiences and horse riding.  The School is within a commutable distance of Swindon, Oxford, Andover, Basingstoke and Reading and other surrounding towns and villages. 

Our services offer a stable, secure and supportive environment, in which the children and young people we care for can develop the skills and confidence necessary to help them fulfil their potential.

Acorn Care and Education is the UK’s leading independent provider of specialist education, foster care and residential care for vulnerable children and young people. As part of Outcomes First Group we are leading our sector in setting and delivering new approaches that provide measurable outcomes for those in our care.

About the role

Throughout this role your aim is to be actively involved in the support and monitoring of student behaviour. You will implement agreed strategies to improve the communication and behaviour of our students and monitor and analyse this behaviour using our online system. You will support and work with our teachers and Senior Leadership Team to provide essential guidance to our SEMH pupils who have learning, behavioural, social, and physical disabilities. You will build positive relationships with pupils and parents to promote interaction and a constructive learning environment.

Our team at New Barn School are encouraged to take a creative approach, seeking ways to positively engage with and motivate pupils through their day, which promotes learning and raises levels of attainment. You will assist with the organisation of a reward system to promote student responsibility and build a purposeful learning environment that meets each individual educational need. We would like you to be a familiar face throughout the school’s community and be a point of call for students, teachers, and parents.

As a school, we believe and implement restorative principles, helping pupils to identify the root causes of their behaviour and helping them shape modified responses to stressful and anxiety-provoking situations. You will be expected to train and research restorative ideologies and implement restorative justice as part of the school’s behaviour management processes.

About the Group

We are part of Acorn Care and Education and can promise you plenty of challenges, and a rich variety of opportunities to develop your career.

We provide Education and Care across a number of schools and residential homes nationally. Our specialist SEN provision, coupled with our expertise within residential care means we offer thousands of vulnerable children and young people across the UK a holistic, wraparound care, residential and education service, empowering them with everything they need to flourish. It is by no accident that 94% of our schools and homes are rated as Outstanding or Good.

We welcome staff who share our commitment to help children experience better days and better lives. Through ongoing development and training, we ensure our staff are well prepared for their jobs and given every opportunity to extend their skills.

 Who we are looking for

We are looking for someone who is personable, resilient, organised and determined. You must have experience working within a challenging educational environment and of building relationships with SEMH pupils. You must be ICT literate, have excellent communication skills, be organised and able to work on your own initiative.

No two days are the same at New Barn School. We want people who can work at a pace to turn ‘can’t do’ into ‘want to’ and are motivated by working with pupils with complex needs. The ideal candidate will enjoy working with children in a calm and engaging demeanour whilst being resilient, using an innovative style of engagement and be motivated by your belief that every child can reach and achieve their potential.

If you are looking to join a dedicated team in a school that will welcome your ideas and aim to re-engage the young people we teach, we would like to hear from you.

Why join Acorn Education & Care? 

• £24,000 per annum 
• 40 hours per week
• Permanent 

Benefits

Your health and wellbeing are important to us, so you’ll get an exceptional reward package including:

• Holidays are equivalent to 5.6 weeks per annum
• Life Assurance
• Pension scheme with options to increase your contributions
• “Your Wellbeing Matters” – access to a wide range of first-class mental health support services and physical health checks

And a market-leading benefit offering through our Flexible Benefits Platform, Vista, enables you to choose the package that’s right for you, including:

• A wide range of health, wellbeing, and insurance benefits
• 100’s of discount options valid in the UK and abroad
• Cycle to Work Schemes
• Electric Car Purchase Scheme
• Critical illness cover

And that’s not all, we place the outcomes of the children and vulnerable young adults in our services at the heart of everything we do, so you’ll wake every day in the knowledge that your role will have a significant positive impact on the lives of others.

We are committed to the safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. All successful applicants will be subject to a fully enhanced DBS.