Head of Academic Support

The Language Gallery (TLG) is a contemporary institution dedicated to providing a diverse range of programmes. Our commitment is centred around a student-centric learning and teaching methodology, emphasising progressiveness, forward thinking, and modern approaches tailored to meet the diverse needs of our learners.

The Head of Academic Support has the direct responsibility for developing and delivering high-quality and scalable academic support processes, workflows and techniques to support our students’ success and programme delivery.

The Head of Academic Support will implement and monitor an enhanced, experiential mentoring and personal tutoring strategy for TLG across all sites, which currently includes: London, Birmingham, and Nottingham, with the potential for further expansion.

Our student body predominantly consists of mature, home students with working and caring responsibilities. Many of our students have not been in education for several years and some have English as a second or additional language, so at TLG, we are committed to providing both expert subject-specific and academic support to enable all our students to access the learning, so they can attain the value and outcomes of a high-quality student academic experience, in line with our KPIs, our partners\’ requirements and OfS conditions of registration. This is reinforced by our values and commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and providing access to education for students from non-traditional backgrounds.

Position:

• Lead, manage and monitor the Mentor team to ensure development and delivery of effective and efficient personalised academic support and intervention strategies that remove barriers to learning.
• Identify and propose strategies to raise student achievement, ensuring the service remains relevant to student needs.
• Recruit suitable academic mentor staff, plan and monitor workloads, measure results, develop training, and align support with academic requirements for each programme, partner and level of study.
• Provide leadership, scope the service offer, to ensure students have equal access to support services.
• Work closely with academic, student support, registry and administrative teams to meet the needs of all our students, including those with special educational needs.
• Support mentors in creating and implementing action plans for students requiring additional support.
• Monitor the implementation of support plans and report on progress and students’ outcomes to colleagues and management.
• Ensure the Mentor team effectively supports academic interviewing for incoming students.
• Ensure the effective transfer of student information and provide regular progress reports as determined.
• Liaise with partners, Course Directors, Module Leaders, subject matter experts, the Registrar, Head of Assessments and teaching academics to implement the Mentoring programme and activities effectively.
• Develop an evaluation methodology for Mentor services, addressing key performance indicators (KPIs) such as attendance, attainment, retention and B3 CCP.
• Develop strategies to manage and measurably enhance academic integrity working collaboratively with academic leadership and registry to implement a rigorous Academic Misconduct process and support training for students and staff that meets our stakeholder requirements and assures quality.
• Oversee and ensure that sufficient and detailed records of student interactions and attendance are maintained to evidence the mentoring progress, to develop insights and inform enhancements.
• Ensure relevant knowledge exchange and implement good practice from across the GUS Group.

Specific Duties:

• Oversee the creation and development of high-quality mentoring and relevant academic support that meet institutional, accreditation, and regulatory requirements.
• Ensure academic support is aligned with the learning outcomes of the module and programmes delivered and supports our students’ achievement.
• Drive the implementation of policies to ensure fairness, consistency, and rigor in academic support and mentoring design.
• Monitor and ensure all academic support is carried out efficiently and within agreed timeframes.
• Implement systems to ensure that the academic support provided to students makes use of latest good practice, is relevant, constructive, and timely, fostering students’ academic development.
• Act as a key point of contact for all matters related to academic support and mentoring quality and operations.
• Provide leadership and support to academic and administrative staff involved in mentoring, promoting a culture of continuous improvement.
• Implement strategies that demonstrably enhance academic integrity and reduce academic misconduct.
• Prepare data and reports, to share with partners, management meetings, academic committees and Boards.
• Manage departmental budgets as necessary.

Requirements:

• Masters Degree and/or relevant professional qualification/experience.
• A teaching/coaching qualification and/or membership of Advance HE.
• Extensive knowledge and experience of the higher education sector and personal tutoring/mentoring strategy and operations.
• Proven experience in leading successful mentoring teams and operations change.
• Experience of working within a regulatory framework within data management provision.
• Experience of successful planning, leadership, and management in an educational institution.
• Able to demonstrate innovative and effective ways to implement successful academic support for diverse student groups.
• Able to demonstrate experience of successfully managing teams, and also teams across different sites.
• Able to make judgements on significant new problems where precedent may not apply.
• Inspirational leadership qualities together with evidence of managing successfully and delegating through a non-direct report structure.
• Able to recognise and deal with obstacles and difficulties.
• Confident communicator able to explain and discuss education and student experience activities within the College.
• Ability to write clearly and concisely and present and disseminate management information on a regular and timely basis.

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