Design & Quality Manager

Job Title: Design and Quality Manager

Salary: £ 32,000 plus £3,000 London weighting where applicable

Closing Date: Monday 2nd December midday

Reporting to: Head of Programme Development and Quality

Contract: Full time, permanent

Job Location: London / Midlands / North

The role is based from home with travel to the London office for work meetings about twice a month.

Interview date: Tuesday 10th December / Wednesday 11th December

Start date: Monday 17th February (tbc)

About the organisation

We believe that every young person should have the opportunity to fulfil their potential and make the most of their education. We re passionate about reducing the educational barriers our students face, helping them to pursue a career in their chosen field and follow their dreams.

Our mission is to support students from under-resourced backgrounds to access top universities, through a unique combination of tuition and in-school mentoring. We work with them to make good applications, get the grades and transition to university.

The programme combats educational inequality and improves social mobility by raising students grades and supporting them to understand the pathway to a top university. Students who receive support from our programme are almost twice as likely to attend top universities as statistically similar students, according to UCAS.

Safeguarding Statement

The Access Project is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. Our safeguarding system is underpinned by a range of policies and procedures which encourage and promote safe working practice across the organisation.

Why work at The Access Project

People who work at The Access Project are motivated by the desire to create a fairer society. We all play an active part in achieving the mission to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds access top universities. At The Access Project, we re a friendly, collaborative, supportive and inclusive team, with passionate people working together in Delivery, Sales and Partnerships, Strategy, Finance and Operations to achieve our mission.

The vision of our people strategy is to enable and inspire all employees to achieve, grow, succeed and thrive. We regularly have opportunities for people to share their ideas in various working groups, generating strong teamwork across the organisation.

We value every individual who works at The Access Project and we have a wide range of benefits that make this a rewarding place to work. In our last staff engagement survey, 90% said they re proud to tell people they work at The Access Project.

Our values

Empowerment

We support students and our people to develop the skills and knowledge to accomplish their goals.

Courage

We encourage our students and our people to be authentic, innovative and ambitious in order to reach their full potential and deliver our mission.

Impact

We evolve our programmes through an evidence-led approach, supporting our students to achieve their best outcomes.

Inclusion

We respect and value individuality and engage diverse voices to achieve our mission.

Ownership

We hold ourselves accountable in all our actions and efforts. We ask What can I do to improve my results?

About the role

This role is available at an important time for The Access Project as we expand our mission, deliver a new programme model, and move into new school contexts. This is an exciting opportunity for someone with the skills for programme design and improvement, a strong interest in research, and a deep passion for our mission to support students to place and succeed at selective universities.

The ideal candidate will be a strong leader who is comfortable working across teams to make change. You ll be the lead and expert on The Access Project s in-school university readiness work with responsibility for designing and quality assuring the provision, supporting the learning and development of our front-line staff to effectively deliver the programme content. This position is integral to ensuring The Access Project is delivering a high-quality programme that supports the needs of our students and drives the outcomes of the programme across all regions and schools. The postholder will bring their knowledge of the HE sector and the experiences of our students to decisions about the direction of our own programme. They will also support further development of our programme-level Diversity and Inclusion work, to ensure that the programme is tailored where feasible to the needs of all students.

Role responsibilities

Design & Development

• Project manage and deliver our programme design process, leading the implementation of an agile, in-year approach to effectively iterate The Access Project s Accelerate (2-year) programme.
• Lead the development of our self-paced online learning provision, incorporating learning from delivery and best practice from the sector.
• Work with the Head of Programme Development and Quality to incorporate University Access Officer, Programme Leadership, school, and student feedback on how to best drive short-term and long-term outcomes across our programmes.
• Project manage the implementation of changes driven out of programme design. This includes the creation of or changes to delivery resources and training materials, as well as our university readiness framework and the Salesforce system that supports delivery.
• Ensure we continue to update our long-standing Gateway (4-year) programme as part of standalone programme design project.

Research to inform programme design and quality

• Remain critically engaged with the widening participation/social mobility sector, and able to synthesise key changes/challenges and ensure that they are applicable/actionable by the organisation.
• Ensure that any relevant Widening Participate sector developments and trends are fed into The Access Project s way of working. For example, this might be changes to resources for the programme or working with colleagues to communicate with students (e.g. plans for A Level Results Day).
• Provide nuanced insight about the WP/HE sector, with a coherent view of the landscape and how it s changing, to enable The Access Project to make informed choices about our programme.

Quality Assurance

• Be responsible for the implementation of the university readiness strand of the quality assurance strategy, to drive the quality of the activities The Access Project delivers to young people in schools.
• Lead on the quality assurance of self-paced learning content, collaborating with Online Delivery colleagues to identify best practice and develop a comprehensive approach.
• Participate in The Access Project s quality assurance processes, including performing drop-ins on University Access Officers, and coordinating with other members of the team to perform drop-ins in an efficient and effective manner.
• Embed learning from The Access Project s quality assurance process into our standard practice. This will include training and development for University Access Officers and updates to resources and guidance for what best practice looks like.
• Contribute research on wider pedagogical best practice into our quality assurance work to ensure the highest quality in our delivery of educational programmes.

Student Voice

• Maximise student voice within programme design through varied feedback mechanisms, including the organisation and facilitation of regular student focus groups.
• Lead the development and administration of The Access Project s annual student survey, considering the needs of key stakeholders across the organisation.
• Lead and develop The Access Project s overarching student voice strategy.
• Continue to drive improvements in TAP s student voice work through research and engagement with sector leaders.

Any other duties as required by the Head of Programme Development or Director, Delivery

Person specification

Essential

• Confident leader and collaborator: ability to work positively and collaboratively across functions to drive continuous improvement.
• Strong communicator: demonstrable success at giving feedback and clearly communicating your perspective.
• Strong facilitation skills: an experienced and dynamic, meeting, training and workshop facilitator.
• Excellent time management and organisational skills: and a proactive and creative approach to problem solving.
• Experience of programme design and development: committed to and confident using data to make evidence-based decisions.
• Project management skills and experience, particularly in planning and monitoring.
• Deep knowledge of and passion for youth mentoring.
• Strong understanding of the UK education system and the challenges facing learners from widening participation backgrounds.
• Strong research skills in sector analysis.

Desirable

• Experience of using Salesforce (or another CRM system) as a case/student management system.
• Experience of designing engaging online learning or educational resources.
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