New School Establishment Lead in Southport

Our purpose is to make skills, education and employment accessible to every person, so they can create their own world of unbounded possibilities.

The BUSY Group is a not-for-profit organisation with 47 years of experience as a community partner. With multiple business entities operating across 100+ locations Australia-wide and now in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, we offer an extensive range of employment services and programs, vocational training, apprenticeships, mentoring, Inclusive Employment Australia, specialist schools and allied health services.

The BUSY Group is expanding its educational footprint, launching new schools and learning initiatives that make a real difference for students, communities and industry. We’re looking for a New School Establishment Lead who can turn strategic ambition into practical, operational reality. This is a rare opportunity to lead establishment work at scale. You’ll be the operational lead behind new school creation, developing operational models and supporting the start-up of new schools in the BUSY network. Your work will directly shape how new schools open, function and succeed — locally, nationally and internationally.

What You’ll Lead:

• End-to-end operating model design — creating practical, sustainable models for new schools and education initiatives.
• Strategic translation — turning growth objectives into operating assumptions, readiness frameworks and implementation roadmaps.
• Student lifecycle modelling — designing recruitment, enrolment, onboarding, attendance, engagement, completion and offboarding processes.
• Campus, staffing and timetable models — contributing to the structures that make a school function smoothly from day one.
• Cross-functional collaboration — working with curriculum, regulatory, IT, HR, finance, property, marketing and operational teams to ensure plans are integrated and achievable.
• Operational dependency mapping — identifying what needs to be ready, when, and by whom.
• Readiness and risk management — ensuring campus, staffing, systems and service delivery are prepared for launch.
• Handover materials and implementation tools — developing clear guidance that school leaders and Business Support teams can confidently use.
• Continuous improvement — adapting models and procedures for new jurisdictions, contexts and education models.
• Transition to business-as-usual — supporting new schools as they move from setup to steady-state operation.

This is a Southport-based role with the flexibility to work from home as part of our hybrid model.

BUSY Benefits:

• 4 additional paid annual leave days – 1 My BUSY Day and 3 days at Christmas.
• Enjoy a hybrid work model, collaborating in the office and working from home.
• Clear pathways for internal advancement.
• Dedicated training budget for personal and professional growth.
• BUSY Benefits program - Paid parental leave, retail discounts and access to Fitness Passport (QLD only).
• Community Giving day.
• Enjoy work that genuinely impacts lives.
• Employee Assistance Program with Sonder Wellbeing App.

Skills And Experiences About You:

This is a hands-on design and enablement role, perfect for someone who loves building frameworks, solving operational puzzles and bringing order to ambiguity. You will show capability in:

• School establishment expertise — you understand how to design and operationalise a school end-to-end, including student lifecycle, campus readiness and daily operations.
• Systems thinking — you connect strategy, regulation, curriculum, staffing, technology, finance and service delivery into practical operating models.
• Strong judgement — able to frame options, assess trade-offs and make clear recommendations in complex or ambiguous environments.
• High-quality communication — confident engaging executives, school leaders, Business Support teams and external partners.
• Complex program management — skilled at coordinating multi-stakeholder establishment work, competing priorities and interdependent deliverables.
• Cross-functional collaboration — comfortable working across operations, curriculum, tech, compliance, property, workforce, finance, marketing and governance.
• Documentation + implementation — experienced preparing operating models, business cases, Board papers, readiness reports and handover materials.
• Relevant qualifications — education, business, operations, project management, public policy or similar.
• Education sector experience — independent schools, special assistance schools, VET, higher ed, government or not-for-profit environments (highly regarded).
• Child safety commitment.

If you want to help shape the next generation of BUSY Group schools — and build operating models that genuinely empower leaders, teachers and students — we’d love to hear from you.

Next steps:

Candidate care is important to us; this role will actively commence recruitment from the date of advertisement. The closing date of this ad is dependent on the appointment of the role. The BUSY Group is an Organisation that puts the best interest of children and young people first by adhering to the Child Safety Organisation National Principles. The appointment of successful applicants will be subject to satisfactory employment screening including criminal history and relevant working with children checks. The BUSY Group is committed to achieving a diverse workforce and strongly encourages applications from First Nations People, veterans, people from culturally diverse backgrounds and people with disabilities.