Education Support Officer

The education development team is dedicated to enhancing leadership and teaching quality in Neath Port Talbot (NPT) schools, with the long-term aim of ensuring that all learners make meaningful progress towards the four purposes of education. This is an innovative position, requiring forward-thinking strategies and creative solutions to address the evolving challenges within the region. As Neath Port Talbot faces increasing levels of poverty—conditions strongly correlated with declining attainment, rising exclusions, and poor attendance—the need to build resilience throughout all school communities has never been more urgent.

Central to this vision is thoughtfully and collaboratively cultivating an equity mindset across all school communities, thereby reducing the impact of poverty on learners' progression and attainment. This commitment aligns directly with the national mission for education.

The team seeks an experienced school leader to champion educational equity on a permanent basis. The lead's role is to thoughtfully and collaboratively drive efforts to transform approaches to equity throughout NPT, fostering the development of an equity mindset among all stakeholders. A key priority is building collaborative, cross-directorate strategies to tackle poverty, emphasising the importance of working together with a range of partners to ensure services are aligned and responsive to local needs.

The lead will play a pivotal role in supporting poverty proofing across all aspects of school life, ensuring that barriers to learning and attainment are identified and addressed systematically.

Community-Focused and Evidence-Informed Practice

The vision recognises that addressing poverty is a shared responsibility across the community. Schools are encouraged to work thoughtfully and collaboratively with local businesses, third sector organisations, and public services, coordinated by the equity leader. The Community Focused Schools (CfS) initiative is a central element of this anti-poverty strategy, aiming to mitigate the effects of poverty on education by aligning services around the needs of pupils and families. The leader will ensure thoughtful investment in CfS and promote effective family and community engagement, while supporting schools to embed poverty proofing in their daily practice.

Alignment with Curriculum for Wales

Evidence-informed practice is to be embedded in alignment with the Curriculum for Wales, recognising that the curriculum encompasses all aspects of a learner's experience. Teachers are required to have a deep understanding of their pupils and act on their starting points, with a clear priority to teach with an equity mindset, thoughtfully and collaboratively supporting every learner.

Collaborative Partnerships and Engagement

This role involves working closely and collaboratively with the Community Focused Schools manager and liaising with the Family Engagement Officers network. The equity leader will represent NPT at national meetings and events, supporting all schools to become more community focused, promoting opportunities for family and community engagement, and strengthening collaborative partnership working through multi-agency networks. Supporting poverty proofing is central to this work, ensuring that every decision and initiative helps to remove barriers related to disadvantage.

Planning for Transition to Improve Attainment in Secondary Schools

Careful planning for transitions in learning, particularly as students move between educational phases, is highlighted as a crucial strategy for raising attainment in secondary schools. The vision emphasises that by strategically allocating resources—especially the Pupil Development Grant (PDG)—and thoughtfully managing transition points, schools can provide targeted support to learners at risk of underachievement. With the leadership and guidance of the equity lead, this focused approach to transition will lay the groundwork for closing attainment gaps and ensuring that poverty proofing underpins every stage of the learner journey.

The main duties of the post; Key Duties

• Developing an Anti-poverty strategy for NPT schools (long-term and system wide)
• System wide understanding of how poverty impacts on people's lives (What schools/teachers can do about it)
• Aligning services including LA, WG, Health, Business, third-sector
• Forging partnership working (National, local, cross-directorate)
• Achieving a paradigm shift in the culture (PL in education sector)
• Planning, monitoring, evaluating and reporting to external partners
• Collaborative working with strategic leads across the local authority to align service provision around the needs of children and their families.
• Using qualitative evidence to influence the strategic direction of policy and practice at a local authority and Welsh Government level.
• Leading schools to developing a deeper understanding of the needs of their communities.
• Designing, delivering and evaluating professional learning opportunities for senior leaders to mitigate the impact of poverty on learning.
• Leading on the roll out of phase two of Community Focused Schools, with support from the CFS manager.
• Represent the local authority at national Community Focussed Schools local authority leads meetings and PDG co-ordinators meetings.
• Share and support schools to implement Welsh Government educational equity guidance within the local authority.
• Provide support to Education Support Officer's to monitor and evaluate schools' self-evaluation processes and to be the link officer for a number of schools.
• Implement a problem-solving format where school leaders collaborate to review common issues, for example, attendance, behaviour, parental engagement.
• Support headteachers to request 'expert input' via guest speakers who can share insight.
• Share up to date research and encourage an enquiry-based approach to professional learning.
• Provide detailed analysis of work undertaken and feedback provided through Welsh Government reporting systems.

Experience and Skills

• Experience of working with community partners at a strategic and operational level
• Experience of policy and strategy development
• Experience in supporting school staff to develop parental engagement opportunities to realise the four core purposes of the Curriculum for Wales
• Support all NPT schools to ensure effective use of the Pupil Development Grant
• Ideally you will have Experience of senior leadership in a school and evidence of a track record of tackling poverty in your school/setting.

You will have experience in/of; Your workstyle will be an agile hybrid worker in this role which gives you the flexibility to work from home and from a variety of Council workplaces as well as the opportunity to carry out your work on any days and at any times. Neath Port Talbot Council is totally committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. Our employees are equally committed to ensuring the safety and protection of all children and young people and will take action to safeguard their wellbeing.

The recruitment process for this post will be underpinned by rigorous safer recruitment assessment to ensure that children and young people are protected. Welsh Language skills are desirable. Applications may be submitted in Welsh, applications submitted in Welsh will not be treated less favourably than an application submitted in English. We offer a guaranteed interview scheme for candidates who have a disability and armed forces veterans. In support of employees of Tata Steel who are at risk of redundancy, or have been made redundant in 2026, Neath Port Talbot Council is offering a guaranteed interview for jobs across the Council. Applicants must meet the essential criteria for the post to qualify for this. If you are or going to be affected by the job losses at Tata Steel then we would welcome an application from you. Just make it known on your application form that you are currently at risk of redundancy or you have been made redundant.

At Team NPT, we all work together to serve the people, communities and businesses of Neath Port Talbot. We are committed to providing training opportunities and the professional development of all our employees. We look forward to welcoming you to Team NPT.

Ready to get started? Start your journey with Educators Wales today.

Salary: Soulbury 21-24. £68,811.00 - £72,507.00 per annum