Working at Ark Acton Academy
View our permanent and supply roles, join our 'Outstanding' rated programme, or find out what makes Ark Acton a great place to work.
We invest in your career and your development
We are heavily committed to staff welfare and development and this includes:
- weekly evidence-led staff training and no fads
- coaching for every teacher with fully trained coaches
- every member of staff has a personal development pathway to help ensure they have the feedback and space necessary to keep improving
- a team of expert Lead Practitioners to offer in-depth support and guidance
- access to training programmes and Masters from Ark and Ambition Institute
- free use of our leisure centre
- access to the school counsellor
- weekly anonymous staff survey
We put the curriculum at the centre
We place the curriculum – what we teach – at the heart of the academy and it informs all decisions we make. In the words of Alex Standish, we believe that “school subjects are a way of inducting children into the intellectual habits of humankind, and hence into a disciplinary conversation about knowing our world”, and we want to work with staff who share this belief in disciplinary thinking, and who will help improve and refine our curriculum thinking. We invest heavily in enabling staff to become curriculum experts and members of the SLT are regular speakers on curriculum design and implementation.
We keep the main thing the main thing
At Ark Acton we have stripped away anything we feel gets in the way of being a great teacher so that we can focus on the main thing. This includes:
- Feedback policies that sit at department level and do not require slavish marking of books
- No graded lesson observations or spurious judgements
- No report writing
- No parent’s evenings
- Only 2 data points a year
- No ½ termly data metrics to track progress
- Protected Department meeting time built into the timetable and staff loadings
- Protected curriculum planning time built into the timetable and staff loadings
- A constant SLT presence to maintain our calm, scholarly atmosphere
- A binary behaviour system that enables disruption-free teaching
Be part of a network
Joining our school means becoming part of a network of education experts who are all united by the same purpose - a commitment to making a difference where it matters most. You will have the opportunity to come together with your peers locally, nationally and sometimes even internationally, to share resources, learning and good practice.
You’ll work with colleagues from different subjects, schools and regions, and have the chance to take on network-wide responsibilities such as leading programmes or training.
Community starts in the classroom.
Discover just how incredible teaching can be.