Safeguarding Officer

at  LeighAcademiesTrust

Longfield Academy are seeking to appoint a Safeguarding Officer to join them in September 2024. This is a truly exciting opportunity for a highly motivated and focused individual who wants to play a key role in working closely with academy staff to ensure student safeguarding needs are met and responded to appropriately. The successful candidate will be responsible for achieving the highest possible levels of safeguarding and well-being for all pupils at Longfield Academy and therefore must be a dedicated team-player with a resilient mindset.

The Safeguarding Officer will be responsible for Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, which is defined as;

• Protecting children from maltreatment
• Preventing impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
• Ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
• Taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes.

This is a permanent position offering an actual salary £18,347 per annum (£23,143 full-time equivalent), working 35 hours per week, term time only.
Working with us: Longfield Academy offers a friendly and supportive working environment with innovation and collaboration at the heart of everything we do. The academy is recognised as an International Baccalaureate (IB) world school and delivers the Middle Years Programme (MYP) to students in years 7 -9. Our most recent inspection in 2018 confirmed that Longfield Academy continues to provide strong educational outcomes for students. The richness of our extracurricular activities allows our students to excel in drama, music, sports and STEM. Leaders of the academy are highly ambitious for all of the students. We have a strong drive for school improvement underpinned by a relentless focus on the core business of improving teaching and learning. We do not limit that ambition to the outcomes of public examinations; our students being prepared for life is equally as important to everyone at the academy. Our pastoral system is truly exceptional and we pride ourselves on the quality of care for every student. Our Post-16 provision continues to go from strength to strength, rated in the top 10% for Kent, with our students securing places at top universities.
Longfield Academy benefits from modern, state-of-the-art facilities for learning across all subject areas. We have a thorough and robust approach to school improvement, and the academy is well on course to becoming a truly Outstanding school.
The school is heavily oversubscribed in year 7 and year 12. For more information about our academy, please click here.
Being part of Leigh Academies Trust: As of 1st April 2024, our Trust comprises 32 geographically organised academies (16 secondaries, 14 primaries and 2 special) educating more than 20,000 students and employing 3,000 talented staff. Nearly 40% of our academies are judged outstanding overall by Ofsted, versus 15% nationally. The Trust is establishing four ‘clusters’ of academies: North Kent; Central Kent; South East London; Medway. In addition, the Trust is responsible for one of the region’s biggest initial teaching training organisations, a large teaching school hub and is an accredited apprenticeship provider. Our future plans are found in our Vision 2030 document available on our website.
As part of Leigh Academies Trust, you will have ample opportunity to collaborate with your peers both within the academy and across the whole Trust. This is an important part of our vision as we know through experience that we perform better when we work together. You are supported to undertake regular self-development to continue your professional development and hopefully progress further within the organisation.
Click here to view the benefits available to all LAT employees from day one.
Our commitment to safeguarding: Leigh Academies Trust and all of our academies are committed to ensuring the highest levels of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our pupils, and we expect all our staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We adopt a fair, robust and consistent recruitment process across all academies and business units which is in line with Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance. This includes online checks for shortlisted candidates - you can read more about this in our Recruitment Guidance. All offers of employment are subject to an Enhanced DBS check, references, and where applicable, a prohibition from teaching check.
Our commitment to equality and diversity: As a Trust, we are passionate about diversity and recognise that as individuals, we all bring something unique to the role regardless of any protected characteristics which is why we treat all of our people equally, without compromise. We are committed to providing equality and fairness throughout our recruitment and employment practices and not discriminating on any grounds.

• Protecting children from maltreatment
• Preventing impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
• Ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
• Taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes