Librarian and Literacy Support Coordinator

Harris Academy Battersea is a mixed state secondary school serving a truly comprehensive community in the heart of London. We are an Ofsted ‘Outstanding’ school with a track record of delivering fantastic outcomes year on year for our students. In 2023, Ofsted visited the academy and judged us as remaining ‘outstanding’, commenting on our “highly ambitious curriculum”, the “exceptionally high quality of education” provided and noted that “behaviour in the school is very strong”. Nevertheless, we are extremely ambitious for our school and as we seek to continue to grow and develop, we are looking for more brilliant people to join us.

Our Academy is centred on the values of Knowledge, Integrity and Resilience and these underpin the way we work for both students and staff. Our staff are inclusive, diverse and committed to our mission: we develop aspirational young people to thrive in a changing world.

HABS offers a broad, academic and challenging curriculum founded on six key curriculum aims:

• To develop deep, long-lasting knowledge
• To develop students into accomplished readers, writers and orators
• To provide experiences within and beyond the classroom that enrich learning and ensure students can make informed choices about their futures
• To equip students to challenge injustice in all its forms
• To enable students to understand how they learn
• To support students to reflect on their choices and values to improve themselves and their community

These aims underpin all elements of our curriculum, and we see our core academic curriculum and wider personal development curriculum as intrinsically linked. All staff at the Academy contribute to the personal development of our students through their roles as tutors and through their contributions to the wider life of the academy.

A thriving school can only function with fantastic staff, and our vision is to make teaching at HABS both enjoyable and sustainable. The wellbeing of staff underpins every decision we make, and we seek to ensure that every member of staff can enjoy a work-life-balance enabling them to bring their best to work each day.

At HABS, professional growth and development is central to our mission. Our professional development motto is ‘improve, not prove’ and leaders are relentlessly focussed on supporting staff in getting even better through a wide range of internal and external training opportunities.

As a part of the Harris Federation, all staff in the Academy benefit from being part of our network of more than fifty primary and secondary academies across London. Vibrant networks of subject experts meet regularly and teachers can access bespoke support from our central teams of consultants.

For more information about what we do and who we are, we encourage you to visit our website here as well as our careers page here and explore!

Your responsibilities will include:

• Leading on the strategic management, organisation and supervision of the Library
• Maintaining a professional, stimulating and tidy learning environment at all times, foregrounding student achievements
• Managing the Library’s electronic management system, including reviewing its effectiveness
• Contributing to presentation and consultation evenings and meeting with parents to encourage reading beyond curriculum time
• Contributing to and maintaining library displays and the organisation of books
• Providing advice to staff, students and the community
• Offering training activities for staff in relation to effective use of learning resources
• Supporting with the time-tabling and booking of the Library’s spaces
• Collaborating with the English team to coordinate and deliver regular Library lessons
• Liaising with the English team to publicise and organise regular LRC book events, including visits from writers
• Supporting students with book choice and borrowing
• Ensuring that all learning resources and equipment are well maintained
• Encouraging the effective use of the Library across the curriculum
• Providing guidance to groups and individuals using the Library
• Liaison with other information agencies including other resource areas and across the Federation
• Development and implementation of study and information skills linked into the curriculum
• Participating in community links, including opening out of academy hours (a flexible approach to working hours is required)
• Management of the Library’s delegated budgets, reporting to the Director fo Resources
• Keeping appropriate and effective records using academy ICT systems
• Disseminating information on resources and access to staff and students
• Monitoring, evaluating and reviewing the use and development of the area,
• Organising and supervising after hours, lunch time and break time use of resources
• Liaising with parents regarding student usage, borrowing and overdue or unreturned resources as appropriate
• Coordinating, training and managing the Student Librarian team

We would like to hear from you if you have:

• Qualifications to degree level or equivalent.
• Excellent knowledge of literature including contemporary children’s and YA literature
• Knowledge of library systems
• Knowledge of National curriculum particularly for English
• Knowledge of how children learn to read and how reading skill relates to learning outcomes
• Experience of working with others to deliver projects or outcomes
• Excellent organisation skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to liaise professionally with external stakeholders
• Excellent IT literacy