Teaching Assistant

This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role supporting students at Casterton.

Casterton puts the well-being of its staff at the heart of everything but not in a superficial, corporate, or tokenistic way. For example, we don’t observe lessons (except for ECTs (Early Career Teachers)) and we do not grade them either.

We don’t have mock Ofsted’s or subject focus weeks and we prefer a feedback policy to a marking policy. In other words, staff are trusted rather than micro-managed. Perhaps that is why we recruit so well and retain our staff-because they are treated as professionals and respected.

We are a single academy trust so there is no CEO or distant trust board and no corporate policy to adhere to. Instead, we are a local school serving the local community of Stamford and Rutland. People are often surprised to find our intake is in line with the national average on KS2 prior attainment or EHCPs (education, health, and care plans) because our progress 8 scores are so good, but that’s down to our ethos and approach.

We are proud to be comprehensive and our ethos is ‘ability is not fixed,’ because we believe that in the right circumstances, every child can achieve remarkable things. The challenge for us is to create the right circumstances. You may notice this is not your usual glossy, branded, corporate, application pack. That is because we aren’t any of those things. We just do the ordinary things very well, and by trusting our staff, as well as our students, they do wonderful things in return.

Unsurprisingly, although we occupy old buildings that are not exactly state-of-the-art, we have grown by 40% in the last six years and won a host of awards, including being in the top three for Secondary School of the Year 2021. That is not to say, Covid was easy for us because it most certainly was not, and we currently have our fair share of young people with trauma and mental health problems. However, we create a culture of Care, Kindness and Communication that works for most of them and, together, as colleagues, we support one other.

Casterton is a school with a heart and a soul, and I think that counts for a lot.

Carl Smith Principal