Group Head of Nurseries

Lead with purpose. Inspire potential from the very beginning - Join us as Group Head of Nurseries

As Group Head of Nurseries, you will play a key role in delivering our shared ambition to provide outstanding, inclusive early years education across our communities. You will provide strategic leadership across all nursery settings, ensuring a consistently high-quality experience for every child, rooted in the principles of the EYFS and aligned with Ofsted expectations.

Primarily based at Broadstairs, you will work collaboratively with our Nursery Managers at our Nurseries in Broadstairs, Canterbury and Folkestone, to build strong, high-performing teams, supporting them to deliver excellent outcomes across quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management. Through clear direction, coaching and support, you will embed a culture where high expectations, continuous improvement and a child-centred approach are at the heart of everything we do.

You will use data, insight and professional expertise to evaluate provision, identify opportunities for growth and drive improvements that enable all children to thrive and make strong progress from their starting points. Alongside this, you will foster effective partnerships with families, local authorities and external agencies, ensuring our provision is inclusive, responsive and fully compliant with safeguarding, SEND and funding requirements.

As a visible and values-led leader, you will model excellent early years practice and support the development of others, helping to create environments where both children and colleagues feel supported, valued and able to succeed.

Outstanding Ofsted Provider

East Kent Colleges Group is an Ofsted Outstanding rated provider. It is proud to be the first General Further Education college organisation in the country to have received the Outstanding grade against each of the strands under the new Ofsted inspection framework. An inclusive provider, our colleagues place our students and the communities we serve at the heart of everything they do across EKC Group and this is illustrated in our ‘Strong’ skills grading by Ofsted.

Commitment to Safeguarding

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and we ensure that all staff are aware of their responsibilities for upholding these principles.

As a designated establishment, we are exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and therefore have an obligation to carry out checks to ensure that staff are suitable to work with children and vulnerable adults. These checks include conviction/caution self-declaration, Enhanced DBS check and obtaining sufficient referencing.

It is a criminal offence to apply for a post which involves engaging in regulated activity relevant to children if you are barred from doing so.

If you are successful in being shortlisted to interview, your suitability to work with children and vulnerable adults will be explored as part of the interview process.

Commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

East Kent Colleges Group is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all members of our communities. We are particularly keen to increase the diversity of our staff body and encourage applications from candidates where there is underrepresentation in our workforce.

We are proud to hold the Positive About Disability Award and are a Disability Confident Employer. This confirms our commitment to interviewing all applicants who declare that they have a disability and who meet the essential criteria outlined in the person specification. With any successful candidate, we will explore any reasonable adjustments to a role due to a health needs or disability.

Similarly, we have a commitment to Care Leavers (Care Covenant Pledge) and to current or previous Armed Forces personnel (Armed Forces Covenant Pledge) with a commitment to interview applicants who meet the positions essential criteria and who have declared this on their application. 

We welcome applications from anyone wishing to work flexibly and those considering a return to work from a career break.

We do not engage with agencies for permanent staff and have an in-house recruitment team.