Do you want to be part of a team where you will help make a lasting impact on our students and rapidly accelerate their progress?

Do you want to work in a school where you are free to teach, with impeccable student behaviour and unhindered by bureaucracy?

Cottenham Village College is seeking to appoint a full or part-time Teacher of Modern Foreign Languages (Spanish) to join a successful and thriving subject team.  We are looking for someone who will promote the role of languages at the College.  The successful candidate would join a team of subject-specialists who are experienced, reflective and enthusiastic in maintaining high levels of behaviour and discipline.

We wish to appoint a full-time or part-time teacher, who will be required to teach to the full ability range across Years 7-11. This position would be ideal for an early career teacher or an experienced teacher who has relevant and recent teaching experience of Spanish to KS4 across the range of prior attainment – if candidates can only offer one language at KS4, Spanish would be preferable, but we would also welcome interest from candidates who can also offer some French at either KS3 or KS4.

If you join us as a newly- or recently-qualified teacher then you will be provided with a supportive and friendly environment in which to begin your career, with a full induction programme; you will have also additional time for your training and development, working with a trained mentor. The department has considerable experience in supporting the development of teachers including ECTs and draws on the best practice inside and outside the school to do so.

We have shared planning across the department and marking expectations ensure staff can teach unburdened from excessive workload. We teach using Extensive Processing Instruction (EPI, Dr Conti) methodology at KS3 and hosted CPD with Dr. Gianfranco Conti in 2023. However, we are open to candidates with experience of success with other pedagogies. The school leadership team and wider trust are very supportive of languages and most students choose to study a language at GCSE. We have good curriculum time at KS3 and KS4 and are therefore able to support students to make good progress. Our students are kind and friendly and will regularly thank you for the lesson on leaving the classroom. We would love to welcome prospective candidates for a visit or a phone call to find out more about our school. Please contact the Head’s PA, Sharon O’Mullane on sharon.omullane@astreacottenham.org to arrange this if of interest.

We are committed to a knowledge-rich curriculum and a traditional approach to teaching, behaviour and culture. We believe that schools must teach powerful knowledge, ’the best that has been thought and said’ and an ‘entitlement curriculum’ for all. We believe in explicit instruction and have been greatly influenced by Lemov’s ‘Teach Like A Champion’, Rosenshine and recent developments in cognitive science. We believe that the creation of a scholarly culture that is warm and strict, disciplined and joyful, where there is ‘purpose not power’, ensuring impeccable behaviour, where teachers can focus on teaching and pupils can focus on learning, underpins everything.

We are values-driven and our vision is to provide an inclusive, aspirational and academic education for all our students, so that all of them will learn, thrive and lead successful lives. We are unapologetically ambitious for every child, no matter what their background, prior attainment or needs. We want to ensure that all our students have the option to be able to go to university or aspirational alternative. We are not going to reduce expectations because of a child’s background or home life, or because they are new to English or have a special education need. In fact, the opposite is true. It is our job to redouble our efforts to help children overcome these barriers so that they can flourish.

We value our staff highly and treat workload very seriously. Our systems are high leverage, ensuring you can really focus on your core purpose – teaching, in a sustainable way, unhindered by bureaucracy or poor behaviour.

What we offer:

• Huge support and progression opportunities
• A knowledge-rich curriculum built on ‘powerful knowledge’ influenced by the importance of subject-specificity, and by thinking such as Rosenshine and Lemov.
• Collaborative planning with centralised, shared units of work and resources
• A feedback policy focused on whole class feedback – no onerous marking policies
• Disruption-free learning
• Highly visible/supportive senior leaders who will support you
• Centralised detentions, including homework detentions
• No formal graded lesson observations – just ongoing ‘no-stakes’ feedback cycles to develop our practice
• Excellent ongoing CPD, career development and promotion opportunities across the Astrea Cambridgeshire region
• Opportunity to complete NPQs
• An unrivalled professional progression model
• A very pleasant location in beautiful Cambridgeshire

What we are looking for:

The successful candidate will be:

• A highly effective MFL teacher.
• Aligned to our values and mission. If you are the type of person who fits with our culture, you will love working here.
• Someone who passionately believes that all children can achieve, no matter what their starting point, background or needs. Someone that does not make excuses for what children can achieve.

Interested in applying?

If this is something you are interested in, looking for a new challenge, have a passion for education or maybe all of the above, take a look at the Applicant Brief to find out more about the role and how to apply.

We actively welcome visits and would be delighted to show you around our academy to appreciate fully our excellent learning environment.

Astrea Academy Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. We expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. All posts are subject to satisfactory background checks including references and enhanced DBS checks.

All queries should be directed via email to headspa@astreaacademytrust.org

The Astrea Resourcing Team supports this job advert. Agency involvement is not required.