Vice Principal – Longsands Academy - Pastoral 

Full time | Permanent | Start: September | Salary: Leadership Scale (LS) 20–24 | Closing date: 15 May 

Longsands Academy is seeking an outstanding, visible and values-driven leader to join our Senior Leadership Team as Vice Principal. This is a rare opportunity to lead transformational change across the pastoral landscape of the academy—shaping a culture where high standards of behaviour, safety, kindness, and belonging are non-negotiable, and where every minute of learning is protected so that every child can flourish. 

As part of Astrea Academy Trust, Longsands is a community that is unapologetically ambitious for every scholar, regardless of background, prior attainment, or need. Our values—scholarship, curiosity, tenacity, respect and responsibility—sit at the heart of daily life, and our mission is clear: to work relentlessly to remove barriers and disrupt disadvantage. 

About Longsands Academy and Astrea

At Longsands, you will join a team committed to a calm, purposeful and inclusive environment where staff are supported to do their best work and scholars are supported to achieve exceptional outcomes. As a Trust, Astrea is committed to ensuring all children have accelerated opportunities to learn, thrive, and lead successful lives, with a clear 2030 strategy and an unwavering focus on inclusion and excellence. 

We welcome visits to the school before you apply—please contact Sharon Kontou at Sharon.Kontou@astrea-longsands.org to arrange a visit or an informal conversation.

The Role: Purpose and Impact

This role exists to lead and drive rapid, sustainable improvement in behaviour, culture and pastoral systems so that high-quality teaching and learning can happen in every classroom, every day. 

You will be instrumental in:

• Building a culture where scholars feel safe, experience joy and belonging, and where expectations are explicit, consistent and upheld with warmth.
• Leading with strategic clarity and relentless follow-through, ensuring systems are embedded, understood, and delivered with precision. 
• Strengthening the academy’s pastoral “engine room” so that staff are supported, accountability is clear, and improvement is continuous. 

Key Responsibilities

Working alongside the Principal and Senior Leadership Team, the Vice Principal will:

• Lead and drive transformational improvement across behaviour, culture, safeguarding and wider pastoral systems, ensuring consistently high standards for all scholars.
• Take shared responsibility for the day-to-day leadership and management of the academy alongside the Principal, deputising where required.
• Establish and sustain a calm, safe and orderly learning environment where disruption-free learning is the norm and every minute of learning is protected.
• Ensure safeguarding arrangements are robust, effective and responsive, promoting the wellbeing and safety of scholars and staff at all times.
• Use pastoral, behaviour and attendance data intelligently to identify trends, diagnose barriers and implement timely, impactful interventions.
• Be a highly visible senior leader who models the academy’s values, commands presence, and consistently upholds high expectations across the school.
• Line manage and develop senior and pastoral leaders through coaching, challenge and high-quality professional development.
• Strengthen systems, routines and accountability to secure consistency, tackle underperformance and sustain continual improvement.
• Champion inclusion and equity, ensuring disadvantaged and vulnerable scholars are supported to thrive academically and personally.