Wider Achievement and Lifelong Learning Development Officer – Maximising Residential Attendance

Job Description

Children, Education and Justice Services

Wider Achievement and Lifelong Learning Development Officer – Maximising Residential Attendance - Fixed term for 10 months
Bangholm Outdoor Centre

Salary: £37626 - £44257 per year, (Pro rata for part time)
Hours: 14.4 hours per week

The City of Edinburgh Council operates two outdoor centres providing high quality, inspirational residential outdoor learning provision. Our ongoing aim is to maintain a high attendance rate on our residential visits to Benmore and Lagganlia, ensuring those facing the greatest disadvantage benefit from impactful experiences. Centre staff and schools work collaboratively to achieve this, including a variety of different funding solutions as well as removing potential non-financial barriers. As part of our ongoing development, we are seeking a skilled and experienced officer to further develop our approach to funding residential visits to Benmore and Lagganlia. More specifically, this will involve: investigating the funding landscape for residential visits and identify / prioritise opportunities; sharing and facilitating funding opportunities for Council schools and other groups; creating a funding strategy toolkit for schools; sharing good practice via case studies; creating a sustainable ‘benevolent’ fund, devise a distribution solution and start to secure funding and (revenue to support attendance); investigating and starting to secure funding opportunities for capital investment in the centres; and support us in how we can sustain this role.

We are looking for applicants with a proven track record in fundraising, including some of those areas listed above. Flexible working solutions will be considered and travel to Benmore and Lagganlia will be expected. Maybe you have the expertise from one sector and are excited by applying these to outdoor learning residential visits? If so, we would love to hear from you. You will need to: show initiative; demonstrate excellent project management skills; work collaboratively within our supportive and skilled team; liaise effectively with our much-respected schools and other relevant Council services and officers; undertake effective partnership work with existing charities; and work within existing Council policy and procedures. This is an exciting opportunity; supporting children and young people to experience inspirational outdoor learning and to create lifelong memories.

This post is part of a Transforming Outdoor Learning’ project. See Transforming OL Learning for further information about this exciting project. The Council has a strong commitment to outdoor residential learning. Benmore and Lagganlia are part of the Council’s Outdoor Learning and Adventure Education Team, operating via the ‘Experience Outdoors.org’ brand. Our mission is to CHAMPION, EMPOWER and DELIVER safe, meaningful and accessible high-quality outdoor learning and adventure education experiences and outcomes.

Please note, the attached Job Description is a generic Wider Achievement and Lifelong Learning Development Officer job description. For specific details of this role, see the attached person specification and details in this advert. Flexible solutions will be considered, including secondments. For further information, please contact Andrew.Bradshaw@edinburgh.gov.uk (Outdoor Learning and Adventure Education Team Manager).

The postholder will be required to regularly visit schools across the city. They will also be required to undertake occasional visits to the Council's Benmore and Lagganlia Outdoor Centres. The Council's latest approach to blended working will apply and the allocated work office is Bangholm Outdoor Centre, Edinburgh.

Requirements

This post is regulated work with children and/or protected adults under the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007. The preferred candidate will be required to join the PVG Scheme or undergo a PVG Scheme update check. Where an individual has spent a continuous period of 3 months or more out with the UK in the last 5 years, an Overseas Criminal Record Check will be required. You will be required to provide this check. An unconditional offer of employment and commencement in the post will be subject to the outcome of both these pre-employment checks being deemed satisfactory.

As part of our goal to improve our organisational culture and create a great place to work together for the people of Edinburgh, we want to make sure that we’re bringing the best people into our roles, not just in their skills and experience but also in their approach to work.

To help achieve this, we’re changing the way we interview and assess candidates by moving from a competency-based interview approach to a behavioural and technical (skills for the job) based approach. This new way of interviewing will allow us to assess how you think and how you would bring Our Behaviours of Respect, Integrity and Flexibility into your ways of working.

We're committed to creating a workplace culture where all our people feel valued, included and able to be their best at work, and we recognise the benefits that a diverse workforce with different values, beliefs, experience, and backgrounds brings to us as an organisation.

You can find out more on Our Behaviours web page Our Behaviours – The City of Edinburgh Council

Our salary range typically reflects the initial starting salary and annually increases until it reaches the top of the range.

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