Education Officer (Eco-Schools)

Full Time / 37 Hours Per Week / Fixed Term for 9 Months due to maternity cover

Leicester City Council provides dedicated environmental education support to schools to help them become more sustainable in all that they do.

Join our dynamic and vibrant Energy and Sustainability Team to deliver environmental education in Leicester as an education officer for Eco-Schools. Our environmental education is delivered to primary, secondary, and special schools in Leicester City. As well as one to one support, schools can engage through termly #EcoTeachmeets, staff training, resource planning, workshops, an annual Eco-Schools roadshow and celebration events.

The Team currently consists of the Sustainable Schools Manager and the advertised Education Officer. We work with partners on a range of environmental projects with schools.

We will consider this vacancy on a secondment basis for Leicester City Council employees. If you wish to apply for this post on a secondment basis then please make your line manager aware before applying.

This is a full time, fixed term position working 37 hours per week, Monday to Friday, for 12 months. You’ll have flexibility in hybrid working being both office based, at City Hall or working remotely from home to suit your needs. However you’ll be required to regularly travel across the city and occasionally beyond to undertake school visits. 

What you’ll be doing:

Day to day you’ll raise awareness of environmental issues and encourage action amongst whole school communities, in order to help improve environmental outcomes. Engaging with Leicester schools to implement and deliver high quality Eco-Schools education by creating and supplying project-based teaching resources for teachers.

Providing practical advice on effective environmental education and the achievement of Eco-Schools standards you’ll prepare and deliver themed assemblies and classroom teaching on Eco-Schools. In addition, you’ll work with our partner organisations to develop Eco-Schools projects including researching, preparing, and submitting funding bids. Monitoring developments within the national curriculum and environmental education, to ensure the best outcome for our schools.

You’ll keep schools up-to-date through dedicated social media, monthly eBulletins and termly newsletters. As well as actively encouraging our schools to sign up for the Eco-Schools Award and achieve various levels of the award.

What you’ll need:

We are looking for an individual with a passion and high level of commitment to environmental education in schools. As someone who prides themselves as organised, you’ll be able to work under pressure and can prioritise competing tasks to meet set objectives, targets and deadlines. With confidence within your own convictions and knowledge of the many benefits of environmental action, you’ll have high a capability to persuade and motivate others to take positive action. With great interpersonal skills, you’ll be able to deal with and respond to people and children at all levels, and from a variety of backgrounds, both individually and in group settings. As well as, being able to deal professionally and with tact when contentious situations arise interacting with many types of stakeholder including students, teachers and governors in schools.

Appointment to this role will be subject to relevant pre-employment checks and an Enhanced DBS check.

What we can offer you

As well as the satisfaction of helping to improve thousands of lives across Leicester, you can look forward to a work environment that encourages a healthy work/life balance. You’ll enjoy generous annual leave, membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme and the option of flexible working. We’ll also give you the chance to develop your skills and expertise with a variety of training and development opportunities. In addition, you can choose from a number of flexible benefits, including discounts on city buses and trains. For an illustrative value of your benefits package, take a look at our benefits calculator.

Join us

We’re committed to recruiting a diverse and highly-talented workforce as we continue to build a council that is fitting and representative of our great city. That’s why we’ve designed our recruitment process to put you at your ease, make you feel welcome and bring the best out of you. We’ll do all we can to make our recruitment process as fair as possible. To help you with your application, take a look at the ‘our approach to recruitment’ page.

If you’d like to have a chat before applying, feel free to contact Marc Tench, Sustainable Schools Manager 0116 454 6746.

Interview/Assessments will take place on 31st of July.