Director General, Schools Group

Department for Education

Greater London, UK

Hybrid

Expires: Expiring in less than 4 weeks

Education

Flexible

£160,000 per year

Job summary

As the Director General for Schools, you will lead the Department’s central effort to ensure every child can thrive and achieve. This is a moment of real ambition for the school’s system: raising attainment; narrowing gaps for disadvantaged pupils; and ensuring every child leaves school with the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need for the future.

Job description

Your leadership and drive will be crucial in turning these ambitions into real-world results for millions of pupils. You will have the platform to drive system-wide improvement at a national scale and will be responsible for overseeing some of the most important issues in education – and wider public policy - today.

Person specification

To succeed, you need to be more than an excellent policy leader. You will need to be someone who brings clarity to reform across complex systems; someone who not only champions evidence and data, but is able build new evidence bases through engaging with the latest research. You will also need to be able to forge strong partnerships, both across the sector and the rest of government, working closely with our Regional Directors to ensure policy and delivery comes together seamlessly, and that reforms translate into better experiences and outcomes in classrooms across the country.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £160,000, Department for Education contributes £46,352 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Learning and development tailored to your role
An environment with flexible working options
A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

See Candidate Brief attached below for more information.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is developed vetting (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

UK nationals
nationals of the Republic of Ireland
nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Salary range

£160,000 per year